Author: Charles

Fusion funerals: Cockneys, immigrants and Hackney hipsters

16 January 2014
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: family funeral directors, funeral cost, funeral customs, funerals in other cultures, Good Funeral Awards, traditional funerals

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

The story of T. Cribb & Sons is one of business resilience in the cultural quicksand of London’s East End. A family-run firm of undertakers since 1881, its heritage is Cockney: close-knit, white, working class communities celebratory of both their roots and the material trappings of wealth: pie and mash and the dogs coupled with a taste for pin-sharp schmutter. Their funerals have been summarised as Victorian music hall meets Catholic High Mass: undertakers with toppers and canes, horse-drawn carriages and extravagant floral wreaths.

With its vicinity to London’s docks, the East End has for centuries attracted immigrants, from the French Huguenots to Polish Jews, the Irish to the Chinese. More recently came the Bangladeshis, Africans and eastern Europeans.

Meanwhile, true Cockneys have upped sticks to Essex. Many a London cabbie will tell you how they cashed in the terraced house in Bow for an all-mod-cons Barratt home in Brentwood while opining ‘the East End ain’t what it was’. And you only have to watch TOWIE to see former Cockneys splurging their cash on smart clobber and wheels, along with Sex on the Beach cocktails and cosmetic dentistry.

T. Cribb & Sons, which started with a single parlour in Canning Town, has also branched out into Essex, buying up undertakers in Loughton, Debden, Benfleet and Pitsea. However, of its 1,800 funerals a year, half are now for non-whites, especially Africans and Asians in east London.

It’s introduced a repatriation service for west African immigrants who prefer to be buried back home in Nigeria or Uganda. It’s also attracted the British Ghanaian community, increasingly content to be buried in England and who, like Cockneys, have a taste for flamboyant funerals, sometimes beyond their means.

Attention to the needs of a broad demographic can also be seen in details such as a Hindu/Sikh washroom at Cribb’s Beckton branch, and the way it’s mindful to bring Chinese mourners home from a funeral by a different route, in order to ward off evil spirits. It even provides limos with the lucky eight in the number plate. Again for the Chinese, it offers a wall of small vaults for votive offerings such as sticks of incense. At £750 for a five-year lease on a vault, this service is being adopted by white Brits, too, showing how cultural influences go both ways.

T. Cribb & Sons is now courting the Muslim market, currently served by a few Bangladeshi undertakers attached to mosques. The showy traits of the Cockney funeral are theologically out of step with Islam in which dead people are swiftly washed, prayed over and buried. But as with most cultural melting pots, people draw on outside influences, whether integration is approved of or not.

For more on this subject, see The Economist here.  It’s a good read, rich in colour gleened from firsthand research. What it doesn’t address is the colonisation of former Cockney turf by middle class West Enders who have headed east for more affordable housing in areas from Stratford to now-trendy Hackney and Shoreditch. As these right-on Guardianistas grow older, might we see less emphasis on Cribb’s website on black-plumed Friesans, bling limos and lavish floral tributes, and more on wicker coffins, woodland burial grounds, ethnic-chic joss sticks and vegetarian catering services at the wake?

As The Economist writer says, ‘Undertakers thrive on the loss of their clients—not on the loss of their client base’. Meeting evolving demand is key. But you can see why some undertakers favour the big spenders. Flowers spelling GRANDAD: A PROPER DIAMOND GEEZER destroy the ozone layer? Gimme a break. Next you’ll be saying wreaths depicting the St George flag might upset the neighbours.

Your number’s up and it’s 23

15 January 2014
Charles
7 Comments
Categories: Uncategorised

The American writer William S Burroughes  met a seaman, a Captain Clark, in the 1960s who told him that he had been sailing for exactly 23 years without mishap of any kind. That very day, Clark’s ship was lost at sea; it went down with all hands. As Burroughes pondered this news he heard a news bulletin on the radio reporting the crash of an airliner in Florida. The pilot was another Captain Clark. The flight was Flight 23.

Ever after, Burroughes became mildly obsessed with the number 23. He discovered, for example, that the bootlegger “Dutch Schultz” (real name: Arthur Flegenheimer) had Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll assassinated on 23rd Street in New York when Coll was 23 years old. Schultz himself was assassinated on 23 October. Charlie Workman, the man convicted of shooting Schultz, served 23 years of a life sentence and was then paroled.

According to Robert Anton Williams in the Fortean Times, “Heathcote Williams, editor of The Fanatic, met Burroughs when he (Williams) was 23 years old and living at an address with a 23 in it. When Burroughs told him, gloomily, “23 is the death number”, Williams was impressed; but he was more impressed when he discovered for the first time that the building across the street from his house was a morgue.”

Is there something peculiarly fateful about the number 23?

It is, after all, the number of a psalm often sung in… funeral services.

Nirvana star Kurt Cobain was born in 1967 and died in 1994. 1+9+6+7=23 and 1+9+9+4=23

However, the number 23 seems not to have been all bad for David Beckham. He wore the 23 shirt for Real Madrid and lives to tell the tale.

The number 5 is gaining ground. There are all those lists of 5 top regrets of the dying. Here are 5 facts about Americans’ views of life-and-death matters. But it’s easier to track this one back to its source: Kubler-Ross’s 5 stages of grief, of course. 

Do you have favourite deathly digit? 

Richard III’s reinterment remains unresolved

14 January 2014
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Dead people's rights

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

Will Richard III’s DNA-approved descendants scupper this May’s planned reinterment of his remains during a televised, Anglican ceremony at Leicester Cathedral? Having objected to Leicester’s claim to the last Plantagenet monarch, there’s now to be a judicial review in March aiming to annul Leicester’s license. Will the case merely postpone reinterment, or result in a new venue: Westminster Abbey, perhaps, where the king’s wife, Anne, is buried? Or Richard of York’s beloved York Minster?  

In the event of victory for the relatives, will they even call for a Catholic reinterment for a Catholic king? The reason why he was discovered under a car park in Leicester in 2012 is because the newly Anglican Tudors destroyed his original resting place, Greyfriars Church, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.  

Several other Plantagenet monarchs have also been rudely disturbed in their resting places, resulting in their remains being lost. Henry II, his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, and their son Richard I, were all buried at France’s Abbaye de Fontevraud in Anjou, which was sacked and pillaged by the Protestant Huguenots in 1562. Richard’s heart was buried separately at Rouen Cathedral, which survived vandalism.

Wives have, on the whole, fared far worse than their regal husbands. While Henry III lies in Westminster Abbey, his Queen Consort, Eleanor of Provence, was buried at Amesbury Abbey in Wiltshire, destroyed in 1539. There was a similar fate for the remains of Edward I’s wife, Eleanor of Castile, when her viscera tomb at Lincoln Cathedral was smashed by Roundheads during the English Civil War, but since rebuilt during the Victorian era.

The tomb of Edward II’s wife, Isabella of France, was at the Franciscan Church at Newgate, London, which didn’t survive the Dissolution. The remains of Henry IV’s wife, Mary, were also lost when the Church of St Mary of the Annunciation in Leicester was destroyed. And the remains of Henry VI’s wife, Margaret of Anjou, were scattered when Saint-Maurice Cathedral in Angers was destroyed in the French Revolution in 1794.

Back to Richard III via the murdered Princes in the Tower. The bodies of two children were discovered during repair work in the Tower of London in 1674. Assumed to be those of Richard’s nephews, Edward and Richard, Charles II had them interred at Westminster Abbey, where they remain. If Uncle Richard ends up at the Abbey, let’s hope his tomb isn’t next door to those of the young princes. 

Candlepower

14 January 2014
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: memorialisation

If you’re out in Soho on a Saturday night chances are, as you reel from one nightspot to another, that a fresh-faced young person will greet you with the somewhat discordant question, “Would you like to light a candle in a church?” 

Being idealists, these gentle, big-eyed souls are used to being rebuffed by all manner of derision, indifference and obscenity. But they keep going because they know that, sooner or later, someone’s going to say yes. 

When they do, they are conducted to St Patrick’s church where they duly light their candle and either sit in the calm for a bit or even read a bit of scripture. They pop in for a moment, all sorts of people, some maybe for a bit of a laugh, but they often stay for up to an hour. By the end of a typical evening, more than 300 candles are dancing and flickering. 

Those who come are not sold religion. The space is as soothing for atheists as it is for holy folk. For them the church is a haven of serenity, somewhere to enjoy a time out from bustle. 

The project is called Nightfever. It started in Germany in 2005 and is catching on over here. 

You know where I’m going with this, don’t you?

Yes, let’s take it further. What a good idea it would be if churches of all denominations were to offer this invitation to bereaved people: Would you like to come inside and light a candle in memory of someone in our church? 

Funeral directors could offer the same invitation. 

And have you noticed how crematoria are happy to offer you somewhere to stash your flowers, but nowhere to light a candle? They should do it too.

Yes, yes, fire risks, terribly dangerous, insurers won’t have it, etc. 

But if churches can, crems and undertakers can. Do it. Lighting a candle in memory of someone who has died is a powerful thing to do. And there is fellowship in all those dancing flames. 

Big is beautiful

13 January 2014
Charles
No comments
Categories: funeral plans

Golden Charter just got bigger. It’s now going to be the conduit through which Sun Life will sell its over-50s life assurance plans to those who ask for a funeral benefit option. 

As Golden Charter say, this “significantly boosts Golden Charter’s market share and choice for consumers”.

The reckoning is that Sun Life Direct customers will now have access to a network of nearly 3000 independent funeral directors across the UK, which Golden Charter says will support job creation in the profession. The deal will also take its own share of the UK pre-arranged funeral market, which is growing rapidly, above 50%.

Funeral Planning Authority figures show 67,484 pre-paid funeral plans were sold in the UK in the first half of 2013, putting the market on course for growth of 12% this year on the total sales of 120,731 in 2012. The average price of Golden Charter’s pre-paid funeral is £3,100.

Ronnie Wayte, managing director of Golden Charter, said Golden Charter sales were up by two thirds in the current financial year.

All of Golden Charter’s surpluses are used to support its independent funeral director members.

ED’S NOTE: That 3000 figure looks a touch optimistic. Using surpluses to support, ie reward, undertakers doesn’t look, on the face of it, customer-facing. 

Seen and heard: should young children attend funerals?

12 January 2014
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Children, funeral

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

Some say death is too sanitised these days, with few people dying at home where all the family can say goodbye, and with professionals now taking over the duties of preparing the body for the funeral.

Has this social development made us over-protective of children, just as they’re now sometimes even shielded from losing in a sports match or failing an exam? Or is it prudent to exclude under-10s from funerals lest they become traumatised, or distract attending adults by being loud and needy?

For the nays’ side the debate, young mother and widow Rachel West says, ‘It’s hard to imagine what my daughters [aged four and six] would have gained from attending their dad’s funeral, but very easy to imagine the potential damage. I was in absolute pieces that day, and needed to be. That alone would have caused them immeasurable distress. I have remained strong in their presence at all other times, which I believe benefits them in these early years.’

On the ayes’ side, experts say attendance can be therapeutic for little ones as long as they’re well prepared. They advise giving child-friendly explanations about death beforehand: it’s one thing to say grandpa has gone to rest in a peaceful place and won’t be coming back, and another to find safe words to explain he’s in that box and is about to be buried or burnt.  

Ann Rowland of Child Bereavement UK also says children need to be forewarned about the possibility of adults crying and be given permission to cry, too. She also recommends an adult is on standby to take them out if they get bored or can’t handle being there.

An Irish love story

11 January 2014
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: Humour

An elderly man lay dying in his bed.

While suffering the agonies of impending death, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favourite scones wafting up the stairs.

He gathered his remaining strength, and lifted himself from the bed. Leaning on the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with even greater effort, gripping the railing with both hands, he crawled downstairs.

With laboured breath, he leaned against the door-frame, gazing into the kitchen. Were it not for death’s agony, he would have thought himself already in heaven, for there, spread out upon the kitchen table were literally hundreds of his favourite scones.

Was it heaven? Or was it one final act of love from his devoted Irish wife of sixty years, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man?

Mustering one great final effort, he threw himself towards the table, landing on his knees in rumpled posture. His aged and withered hand trembled towards a scone at the edge of the table, when it was suddenly smacked by his wife with a wooden spoon…

‘Fuck off’ she said, ‘they’re for the funeral.’

A golden oldie requested by JS.

Knights Templar ghosts walk among Bristolians

10 January 2014
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: Ghosts

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

I’ve just seen a Templar knight in Bristol, walking the streets in helmet, chain mail and white tunic with red cross. This is not uncommon in a city with a rich Templar history, reflected by the station name, Temple Mead, and a Weatherspoon pub called Knights Templar.

I’m not sure if he was a ghost or a man in fancy dress, just pretending to be a member of the monastic military order founded in the 12th century to protect pilgrims to Jerusalem. Paranormal Site Investigators (PSI) have reported many apparitions, especially at the HQ of Avon Fire and Rescue, built over a Knights Templar temple. Interestingly, the sightings are invariably accompanied by the sound of Gregorian chant.

Next year is the 700th anniversary of the death of Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, who was burned at the stake on 18 March 1314 after the former darlings of Christendom had fallen from grace.

King Philip IV of France was the main catalyst for their downfall, torturing them into confessing heretical religious practices and the crime of finding sexual release with each other.

Philip’s motives were dubious. He was broke and the Order of Templars was rich. As well as being holy monks and crack soldiers, another dichotomy of the Templars was they were pioneering bankers, so talented at finance that the Order was richer than monarchs, who it then dutifully bankrolled. Philip owed the Order money but needed plenty more to fund his appetite for European wars. By persecuting the Templars, he could clear his debt, grab some booty, and, at the same time, strengthen France’s position by destroying the Vatican’s formidable army.

Some later historians have also had it in for the Templars, portraying them as a proto-Nazi ethnic extermination squad. But the Templars’ recorded mission was to protect pilgrims and the vulnerable, with no mandate in their book of 600 rules for ideological murder of people holding a different faith.

The Crusades was hardly a time of religious and cultural tolerance. Perhaps the Templars did overstep the mark by modern standards. Perhaps they did lose support in powerful places because they got too big for the boots.

But the ghosts down Bristol way are a chivalrous bunch.

Any takers for the real face of death?

9 January 2014
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Embalming

A few weeks ago I posted a blog about embalming — a short piece, just three quotes, no comment. 

One of the quotes acclaimed the art of the embalmer who, ‘by and through his professional attainments‘ in causing a corpse, by artificial means, to be made tolerably presentable to the living, glorifies ‘the divinity in man‘.

A second quote congratulated embalmers on ‘protecting the physical and emotional health of the people of the United States‘. 

The third quote was taken from the Daily Mirror: ‘Nelson Mandela’s eyes were closed and he had one of his favourite colourful shirts on. He looked completely at peace and had what seemed like a small, contented smile. He lay in state in a glass-topped coffin – his face looking slightly bloated.’ 

I imagined the pro-embalmers reading the blog with self-congratulatory approval — then pondering the technical reason for Mandela’s bloated face. Embalmer error? 

I imagined the non-embalmers – the refrigerators – harrumphing at what I supposed they would regard as the absurd self-regard of embalmers. If you want to read some hot anti-embalming views, just have a look at the latest edition of More To Death published by the Natural Death Centre. 

I wasn’t surprised that the blog was greeted with silence — only one person commented — but I was very surprised to see a huge spike in the number of people actually reading the post. Heaven only knows who they were or what they thought. I wonder, I wonder. 

The main reason for making a corpse presentable  is to enable bereaved people to spend time with their dead person, getting their heads around the fact of their death. This is a belief shared by radicals and reactionaries alike — though not by Jews, who think it bad manners because the dead person can’t return the gaze. Here’s the great American home funeralist Beth Knox on the subject: 

Our dead are offering us a great teaching, and a great healing. They teach of the cyclical, ephemeral nature of life. They teach as we sit vigil, as we witness their departure. They teach an appreciation of life and offer an experience of the deepest love as we experience their loss. 

The convention is to present dead people, whether embalmed or not,  looking at peace — perfectly content to be dead. Whatever the degree of cosmetic intervention involved, from trocar to hairbrush, the process in all cases involves setting the features and closing the mouth.

However well-intentioned, no matter how gently achieved, the outcome is confected and artificial. You cannot ascribe feelings to a no-longer sentient being. Mandela was not smiling, he had a smile assigned to him. 

Is it right to manipulate the faces of dead people in order to achieve this illusion of chilled-out tranquility? The real face of death, after all, is more often open-jawed, exhausted, aghast. 

Well, we’ve been arranging the features of our dead since time began. We do it because we can. Any call for the authentic presentation of the dead can only fall on deaf ears and you’ll not hear it here first. 

But as between the embalmers and the refrigerators, the difference is only one of the means by which they achieve the illusory expression of stillness and serenity. They are brothers and sisters under the skin because their achievement in each case is the same: a white lie. 

There was a fashion in Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries for presenting the dead in all their starkness as effigies on their tombs.

A funeral with a steam engine theme

8 January 2014
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: Hearses

Vintage Lorry Funerals has a number of members in the company’s support team who can provide items to supplement the Floral Tributes or a Theme if their inclusion can enhance a display to exceed a Family’s expectations.

A Garden Contractor has supplied a Victorian Railway Porter’s Cart, a 1950’s Milk Churn and newly sawn Logs. Plumbers, Brick Layers and Joiners provide tools. However the main participant is a man whose Father once owned a Commercial Garage in Steeple Ashton, which closed in the 1960s and has remained untouched, just like when the Mechanics left it on the final day. When David Hall, who owns Vintage Lorry Funerals, believes that some items will be required he is invited to look around an Aladdin’s cave of equipment with the owner having a brainstorming session to select suitable items.

For a funeral in Fleet all David was advised was that the Deceased had been a Fred Dibnah type of guy and the idea of a ‘Steam Engine Theme’ was discussed with the Funeral Arranger. David phoned his Steeple Ashton friend who was able to supply   giant spanners, jacks and vintage oil cans which would enhance the Theme. However, a large square object was required to fill a space on the rear of the display and following a detailed search a Shell Sign was chosen which fitted the flower tray very snugly.

The Family of the Deceased were very pleased with every element of the display, pictures from which were placed in a Memory Box along with other significant items used by the Deceased.

Whilst David Hall, was trundling home over Salisbury Plain he suddenly thought that he should have had Shell’s permission for displaying their Retail Sign. The following morning Shell were contacted and a Senior Manager confirmed that the company would normally have taken a dim view of the unauthorised use of the sign, however, given that it was used in a funeral a retrospective dispensation was granted. 

http://www.vintagelorryfunerals.co.uk