Academia and death

A very damp day, some part Foggy, not very Cold

20 September 2012
Charles
12 Comments
Categories: Academia and death, funeral customs, funeral directors, History

A guest post by Mike Rendell

We are very grateful to Mike Rendell for so generously sharing with us this fascinating account of an eighteenth century funeral. Mike Rendell is a published author who specializes in 18th Century history. He blogs on all aspects of life in the Georgian era here.  Mike is an especially fortunate family historian. He tells me “I still cannot believe how much of my ancestors’ paperwork has survived from the Georgian period, and it is good to share it.” 

I recently came across the bill submitted to my ancestor Richard Hall by the Funeral Director on the occasion of the death of his first wife Eleanor in 1780. The undertakers (that is to say, the company which undertook the arrangements….) were John Cooper & Co. 

Their bill gives some idea of what was involved in a funeral in the Georgian Era in the latter part of the 18th Century. Eleanor Hall had died in her 47th year – she got up and had breakfast as normal on 11th January 1780 at her home at One London Bridge, had a splitting headache at midday, and was dead by six in the evening. In all probability she suffered a brain haemorrhage. It must have been a terrible shock for Richard, who had married Eleanor nearly 27 years earlier, and for their three grown-up children, who all lived at the property.

Richard records her death in his diary “Oh the affliction of this Day. My Dear and Affectionate Wife was suddenly seiz’d with a pain in her head after Twelve at Noon, which issued in a Fit; no Prescription of Physician Avail’d”

Richard was devastated and made a beautiful cut-out in paper as a memorial. The memento is only just over one inch across and is extraordinarily delicate.

He would have employed the firm of John Cooper & Co to make all the arrangements for the actual funeral, which was to take place at Bunhill Burial Grounds (where many Dissenters were buried). Richard and Eleanor were both Baptists and as an additional incentive to choose Bunhill, it was where both her parents had been buried back in 1754. The expenses included opening up the family vault and constructing a tent over it so as to keep prying eyes at bay.

The invoice starts by showing the actual funeral as taking place on January 18th, exactly one week after Eleanor’s death.

To start with the actual coffin and furniture:

An inside Elm Coffin lined and ruffled with fine Crape and a mattress (£1/11/6)

A Superfine Sheet, Shroud and Pillow (£1/15/00)

An outside lead coffin with plate of Inscription (£4/10/00)

An Elm case covered with fine Black Cloth, finish’d in the best Manner with black nails and drape, Lead Plate Cherubim handles, lead plate and wrought Gripes (that is to say, grips) (£5/10/00).

Then there were the extras:

4 Men going in with Lead Coffin and Case (10/-)

7 Tickets and Delivering – 7 shillings. (These would have been official invitations to attend the funeral service, sent out to close friends and often in the form of Memento Mori like this one, shown courtesy of the University of Missouri).

Hanging the Shop and Stair-case in Mourning (in other words, draping black cloth over the entire ground floor and stairs of One London Bridge, from where the funeral procession started its sad and solemn journey)

Use of 16 double silver’d sconces and Wax Lights for ditto

2 Porters with Gowns and Staves with Silk cover & hats & gloves

The best Pall

There then follow a few items which are hard to decipher. What looks like:

A coffin lid of black feathers and man in hatband and gloves

Crape hatbands

Silk ditto

Rich three quarter Armageen (?) scarves for a Minister

12 Pairs of Men’s laced kid gloves

2 Pairs of Women’s ditto

6 Pairs of Men’s and Women’s plain and one pair Mitts

Use of 11 Gent Cloaks

A Hearse and 4 coaches with Setts of horses

Velvet Coverings and black feathers for hearse and six

10 Hearse pages with truncheons , 6 of ye bearers

10 Pairs of gloves and favours for ditto

Eight coach pages with Hatbands and gloves

Use of 5 Coachmans cloaks

10 pairs of gloves for ditto and Postillion

Paid at Bunhill for opening the Vault and for Tent

Fetch and carrying Company

Turnpike and drink for the Men

A total of £51/8/6 which you would need to multiply by perhaps seventy to give a modern-day equivalent i.e £3500 or $5250

It must have made a sombre and imposing sight as the funeral cortege wended its way north of the Hall household on its one mile journey to the graveside. As Richard noted in his diary that night, it had been “a very damp day, some part Foggy, not very Cold” You can almost see the black horses with their black plumes, attended by page boys dressed from tip to toe in black, the heavy coats of the pall bearers, the coffin lined with black velvet….

Philosophy and death

15 May 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Academia and death, Attitudes to death

Posted by Vale

Yale University is starting to experiment with free open access video based learning.

One of the courses it’s offering is run by Shelley Kagan who is Clark Professor of Philosophy at the University. It’s all about death. This is the course introduction:

There is one thing I can be sure of: I am going to die. But what am I to make of that fact? This course will examine a number of issues that arise once we begin to reflect on our mortality. The possibility that death may not actually be the end is considered. Are we, in some sense, immortal? Would immortality be desirable? Also a clearer notion of what it is to die is examined. What does it mean to say that a person has died? What kind of fact is that? And, finally, different attitudes to death are evaluated. Is death an evil? How? Why? Is suicide morally permissible? Is it rational? How should the knowledge that I am going to die affect the way I live my life?

There are 26 lectures published as videos online. You can find them here.

If you are a reader rather than a watcher. Professor Kagan also asks the question ‘Is Death Bad for you’ in an essay published in the – online – Chronicle of Higher Education. This gives you a flavour of the discussion:

People sometimes respond that death isn’t bad for the person who is dead. Death is bad for the survivors. But I don’t think that can be central to what’s bad about death. Compare two stories.

Story 1. Your friend is about to go on the spaceship that is leaving for 100 Earth years to explore a distant solar system. By the time the spaceship comes back, you will be long dead. Worse still, 20 minutes after the ship takes off, all radio contact between the Earth and the ship will be lost until its return. You’re losing all contact with your closest friend.

Story 2. The spaceship takes off, and then 25 minutes into the flight, it explodes and everybody on board is killed instantly.

Story 2 is worse. But why? It can’t be the separation, because we had that in Story 1. What’s worse is that your friend has died. Admittedly, that is worse for you, too, since you care about your friend. But that upsets you because it is bad for her to have died. But how can it be true that death is bad for the person who dies?

You can find the essay here. Worth reading.

What caused Mozart’s death?

11 April 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Academia and death, music

Mozart’s health has fascinated observers for over two hundred years. The documents have examined to reveal every available medical detail. Any mention of a cough or an ache has been minutely analysed for evidence about the diseases he suffered and the mystery illness that killed him at the tender age of 35. But is this intense scrutiny is obscuring our picture of Mozart? Over 160 different causes of death, alone, have now been suggested. Professor Winston sifts through the morass of information and speculation to discover what Mozart’s health can really tell us about the man and his music.

Professor Robert Winston brings a scientist’s ear to his passion for music, exploring the medical histories of great composers and how illness affected the music they wrote.

Caught this the other day – sadly it’s the last in the series, so in case you missed it too and have always wondered how a relatively young man could die whilst composing ‘Requiem’……

You can catch the episode here  if you’re quick – or just listen to the piece itself!

Rumble in the jungle

25 January 2012
Charles
No comments
Categories: Academia and death, natural burial

There’s a very good interview with Dr Hannah Rumble, death scholar and author of the shortly-to-be-published Natural Burial, co-authored with Prof Douglas Davies, over on the Seven Ponds blog. We were struck by some of her insights. These included: 

*   “What distinguishes Britain from America in the main is in the title: ‘natural’. In the UK this tends to be imagined and realized alongside landscapes that encompass the pastoral, such as farmers’ set-aside that turns to meadow, or woodlands. But in the US, I get the impression that the natural landscape incorpated into natural burial provision can encompass more of the ‘wilderness’.”

*   “‘Tradition’ is an interesting subtle difference too. In America, natural burial is aligned with the ‘traditions’ of the  American settlers in the popular imagination. In the UK, our cultural imagination tends to align natural burial with pre-Christian ‘tradition’ and practices.”

*   “When I speak of ‘aesthetic values’ in the UK and ‘romantic values’ I am referring quite a bit to the notion of the pastoral idyll that has a long history in British landscape art and Romanticism.”

*   “The sometimes cruel, sometimes sublime cycles of the seasons here in the UK provided a motif for people’s cycles of mourning and understanding of life and death. ‘Nature’, whatever that ultimately means, is a powerful cathartic tool for the people I spoke to.”

*   “I think there’s similarities in the idea of ‘utility’ of the self that prompts people to donate themselves to medical science or choose natural burial — a recycling, reusing of the body for the greater good … natural burial enables the bereaved and dying to symbolically and literally reproduce the hitherto rotting corpse into an animate, fecund ‘gift’ to ‘nature’ and society’s future generations, which ultimately challenges the  place of the dead amongst the living. The dead become ‘useful’ again rather than a problem to be solved by cemetery management.”

Read the full interview here.

Order the book here. 

University of death

7 December 2011
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Academia and death, National Association of Funeral Directors, SAIF

Hardly anyone buying a funeral pauses to consider whether or not an undertaker is formally trained. Consumers are trusting people. They suppose that he or she is. Well, it ain’t necessarily so.

Training for funeral directors is presently in something of a dark, even unstable, place. The foundation degree course at the University of Bath is to be discontinued. Numbers of applicants for the Diploma in Funeral Directing (Dip Fd) are falling. There’s been a falling out between two providers, the NAFD and the BIFD. The NAFD course is under review. Meanwhile, the independent funeral directors’ trade body SAIF offers some training through its virtual college, the Independent Funeral Directors College.

There’ll never be a consensus about whether or not a Dip FD is worth having; a great many funeral directors reckon not, for reasons good and bad. Some say the training’s not good enough, others that you learn on the job. But an unregulated industry has to look to itself in this matter. If it is to rebuff criticism of its resistance of regulation it needs to demonstrate that regulation is unnecessary. One of the best ways of doing so is to be able to point to high levels of industry training.

As repositories of industry codes of conduct, the NAFD and SAIF might be reckoned to be the best bodies to roll out training courses at all levels. It has been suggested that this is the reverse of truth, but we can’t pin down why. Perhaps someone will tell us.

We have been aware of outsiders surveying the funeral industry recently with an eye to supplying the sort of training that forward-looking funeral directors need. There’s a pretty broad consensus that there is a business opportunity here, with the potential for considerable benefit to the industry. Dip FD courses have been strong on mechanics, less so on those areas of the job requiring emotional intelligence, a quality in greater demand now than ever. We get too many complaints here at the GFG about rotten customer service.  Down at the undertaker’s that becomes ‘total lack of empathy’. We had one on the phone yesterday (complaining about the People’s Undertaker, you guessed). 

Just when we were wondering what would happen next, along comes Green Fuse together with the newly-formed Chester Pearce Associates offering their own Dip FD course. At first glance it looks a bit heavy on mechanics: “Caring for the body and mortuary practice – Removals from different places – Dressing and presenting for viewing – Safe handling and health and safety” but industry insiders will probably reckon these to be hallmarks of credibility. Less reassuring may be that the course is not externally accredited. But Green Fuse has an excellent track record as a training provider with an emphasis on developing emotional intelligence. They are well placed to offer themselves to the industry. If this leads to competition among training providers, that would seem, from the consumer point of view, to be no bad thing. Can’t see the NAFD and SAIF having much time for it. Strategically they need to occupy the high ground; they need to be the go-to people. But Green Fuse has always handled the politics of the industry graciously and with good manners. They have the potential to do well.

Enough from us. Find out more here.

Let us know what you think.

Thanks!

Should the British mourn or celebrate their dead?

19 September 2011
Charles
31 Comments
Categories: Academia and death, Attitudes to death, ceremony, funeral customs, funeral reformers

Posted by Jose Antonio Estevez Garcia

When my best friend died at the age of 38 it was a drama – not only his unexpected loss but also his funeral which, far from helping us to face that moment, only added more pain to those grievous days.

The reason is quite simple: when Angel died his parents were in shock and the funeral was designed following what tradition dictates. This resulted in an event that betrayed his memory and created terrible memories that are difficult to forget – for example, memories of the viewing.

Viewing is a mandatory element in Spanish funerals and it is aimed to allow people to “physically” farewell the one who passed away. When I was told that my friend had died I thought nothing could be so painful until I saw him in the coffin with a broken gesture in his face. Until that moment I only had memories of him smiling and sharing all the goodness he brought to my life. Seeing his dead body in a coffin only opened a new wound. Many people who attended the funeral shared a similar feeling. In my opinion, tradition should only rule our lives if it helps us in any way, otherwise it may be time for a change.

I quit my job in Spain to come to the UK to explore my most creative side, so I started a master’s called “Applied Imagination” at Saint Martins College (one of the most prestigious centers of Art and Design in the world).

Within the master I am developing a research project where I am analyzing ways in which traditional industries to evolve in response to demand for personalized innovative services by customers. To develop this idea I am researching into how creative methodologies such as “Design Thinking” and “Lateral Thinking” can challenge conservative industries with innovative business models co-created by the customers of the previously mentioned personalized services. In summary, it is a bespoke innovation driven by customer demand in traditional industries as a way to disrupt their current business model.

To develop and test my findings I have chosen the funeral industry which, because of strong tradition, is quite reluctant to change. The funeral of my beloved friend made me think that a change in this sector could help other people. The approach proposed in this application case of my project is not against tradition; but in favor of opening our minds to personalized funerals in which traditional and/or innovative elements may help relatives and friends feeling as better as possible, given the circumstances.

In my opinion, the key to reconcile opposed views about the arrangements among those who will attend a funeral is that the deceased makes a decision about it before dying. Exactly like what people do when they choose whether they prefer burial or cremation, but getting into all the other details, like in a wedding (a funeral is not less important as to not give them a thought, specially if you care about the ones who will live your farewell).

To test my proposal I have prepared the video of my funeral, whose aim is to avoid mourning my death but to celebrate my life, what I call a “happy funeral” i.e. a funeral in which all the elements are thought to avoid creating sad memories and aim to generate a positive state of mind. The video is posted above  and has been watched to date by 1130 people.

In addition to the video initiative, I have can you buy cialis online interviewed different stakeholders and gatekeepers and gathered amazing experiences shared by the people who have answered the survey published with the video. I am also researching into funerals in different countries, cultures and religions, trying to determine which elements can help change the state of mind in a funeral from a sad one into a positive one as, in my understanding, this will play an essential supporting part in the required process of accepting and fighting to overcome the pain of the loss of a loved one.

I have had the chance to talk with the sister of a 26 year-old guy who died in Spain last August. It seems that, some weeks before passing away, they had occasional conversations about death where he said he wanted a party if he died.

Unfortunately this happened and his family decided to respect his last will. The death notice they published in the local newspaper was later diffused at national level because it was the first time in Spain a funeral had been announced as if it was a party. And it was a party. A special one where there were moments for tears, but also moments to sing and dance and smile, reminding everyone of the most outstanding feature of this guy: his happiness.

She explained to me that when you have to face the death of a loved one the primary feeling you have is suffering, in her words, a selfish feeling because you only care about your pain without taking care of how that pain will have a negative effect in all the others attending the funeral (aren’t tears as contagious as laughter?). Overcoming the pain and making an effort to be happy to celebrate all the love and the good moments her brother had given to them was seen by her as a generous feeling because it demonstrated care for how others would live that moment. She had lost her brother one month previously, but she talked about him and his funeral in a positive and peaceful way.

When I told her about the funeral of my best friend I realized I still struggle to overcome certain memories that seem like open wounds in my mind. In our conversation it seemed that the “happy funeral” of her brother had helped her more than the traditional one I experienced when I lost my best friend. Apparently it also helped the family and friends of this guy. Even those who had a traditional opinion about the arrangements accepted Aitor’s last will, understanding that it was faithful to his personality and thus a respectful way to honor him.

Along with my video I have published a survey, anonymously answered so far by 220 people. Between 80% and 90% of them have said they would like a happy funeral; but most of them mentioned that they had never thought of the possibility of arranging a funeral in an alternative way. It seems that when people are given options, they open their minds to personalized solutions that may take elements from tradition but which also incorporate issues related to their own life.

And here is where the industry can make a difference, since less than half of the people stated in the survey that the funerals they had been to had helped them feel better. In several cases they state the opposite.

Isn’t this a motive for the professional sector to question whether traditional funerals effectively serve a positive purpose?

Beyond the Abyss

8 September 2011
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Academia and death, Atheism, Attitudes to death

Posted by our religious correspondent Richard Rawlinson

The North Texas Church of Freethought, according to its website [http://www.churchoffreethought.org], offers “atheists, agnostics, humanists, and freethinkers all the educational, inspirational, and social and emotional benefits of traditional faith-based churches”. 

A group of non-believers who acknowledge how many aspects of religion continue to attract, their interest is in what they hold to be the human imagination which dreamt up gods and creeds. They recognise that religion embraces architecture, art, nature, marriage, death, ritual, time – and that by getting rid of God, one is dispensing with notions that have held societies together.

This secularised version of Christianity is not new. In the early days of the French Revolution, painter Jacques-Louis David unveiled “A Religion of Mankind”, which aimed to build upon the best aspects of religious tradition, with feast days, wedding ceremonies, revered figures (secularised saints) and atheistic churches. The new religion would use buildings, good books and academia (seminaries) to try to make us good.

David’s experiment never took off. The Church of Freethought tried to open a ‘parish’ in California but it, too, folded. Is it surprising that secularismhasn’t been able to inspire communal rituals as religion does? Most secularists are content to act individually rather than communally. Why wouldn’t one sleep in, go shopping or read online on Sunday rather than go and hear a secularist lecture (sermon)?

Religions require sacrifices, and reject the secular assurance that everyone can discover happiness and meaning simply through physical life – work and love.

Theists find this as difficult to comprehend as atheists do the belief in a life after death, and the division seems unbridgeable. To some theists, an atheist is necessarily a nihilist, for whom beliefs are unfounded and existence senseless. If each generation’s death means the end of those individuals, then we’re faced with an endless cycle of creation and destruction, the meaning of which, if any, is incomprehensible.

Certainly the bereaved are affected by death, but death cannot be of any consequence to the purely physical human being who no longer exists. If you cease to exist, you need not fear death, where you will feel neither pain, nor pleasure, nor peace, nor torment.

But humanists assert that a person’s life before physical death has existential meaning. Belief in some kind of physical persistence of a human being’s past is the rational argument for the conclusion that even if physical death is the end, living a good life gives meaning and value to human existence.

Humanist philosophers also often speak of the void that would follow death as “the abyss”, suggesting a journey to an unknown place which lies at the end of our physical lifetimes. They seem to be giving substance to “nothing” as we cannot understand or visualise nothing.

Several of today’s physicists concur that we exist in some kind of four dimensional “space-time”. Mathematician Hermann Minkowski said: “Space by itself, and time by itself, have vanished into the merest shadows and only a kind of blend of the two exists in its own right.” Space-time is essentially the history of the universe, containing every event that ever happens.

While it appears to be impossible to scientifically prove that life has meaning, it is equally impossible to prove that it does not.

Posh resurrection men

2 September 2011
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Academia and death, Attitudes to dead bodies

Posted by Charles

The remains of horses and wooden chariots have been unearthed from a Zhou Dynasty tomb in Luoyang, Henan Province, China that dates back almost 3,000-years.

The completed excavation unearthed four horse-and-chariot pits, dating back to as far as 770BC, and the pits have well-preserved evidence of bronze ware and ceramics from the Early Western Zhou dynasty.

Whole article here.

Is it extraordinary in these times that, in the name of archaeology, it’s reckoned perfectly okay to dig up long-dead people interred with all due solemnity according to sacred rites, etc, along with their bits and bobs? Are archaeologists any more than grave robbers with A levels?

From the heroic to the heartfelt – obits in Iceland

19 August 2011
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: Academia and death, Attitudes to death, memorialisation, Secular approaches to death

Posted by Vale

Can the obituaries published in Icelandic newspapers tell us anything about our changing attitudes to death and dying?

Obituaries are a national pastime in Iceland. Every day the leading national newspaper – the Morgungblaðið – publishes pages and pages of them. And they are read avidly. One writer has even claimed that the passion Icelanders have for their obituaries is a sign of a ‘national obsession with death’. 

Iceland’s obituaries are different. They are not about the rich or famous or worthy and they are not written by professional writers. Instead they are, simply, the personal tributes that family and friends make to the people they have lost. And, since the first decades of the last century, Iceland’s newspapers have published pages and pages of them every day, for free.

Over the years the style of obituary has changed and it was this that caught the attention of university researchers. In a paper published by Mortality (Letters to the dead: obituaries and identity memory and forgetting in Iceland) they look at these changes and ask questions about what they reveal about the changing attitudes to death.

Two examples make the point:

“Many memories surface [now that Ari is dead] as the man was an enormous personality, formed by difficult childhood…Of course Ari had to start working very early and maybe this experience shaped the way in which he made great demands on his family when it came to work. In the year 19xx Ari lost his wife who had stood as a rock by his side for almost thirty years. It was clear that this was a severe blow for Ari but he suffered his grief in silence. ‘I am Iceland’s battle,’ Ari said once on a happy occasion, and he certainly was the battle of Iceland, although the battlefield was not one where people get killed. It was the field of dreams and achievements of the man who with optimism and courage was instrumental in developing agriculture in his region from mud huts to modern buildings. Ari …was also famous for his hard work and it was like three shovels were being used when he was digging and three hammers being used when he was hammering. Ari was renowned for his helpfulness, and the bigger the favour asked the quicker he was to respond. . . . I offer Ari’s children and relatives my deepest sympathy. Iceland has now lost one of its best sons. Rest in peace.” 

“My dear dad, how can one understand this? You, so young and fit, are torn away from this earthly life just like that. We who still had so many things to do together. I know, men plan but God decides. Dear dad, I miss your kind words and your hugs terribly. As long as I can remember you have always made my wellbeing your priority. You were not just my dad but my best friend too. Nothing was too good for me. The memories accumulate, but they would fill a whole book. This summer, which now draws to an end, we were allowed to be together even more than usually. The two of us spent most of it together and every day you’d say ‘How shall I spoil you today darling?’ . . .My dear dad, I know you are with God and that we will meet again, but until then I’ll seek solace in warm memories and in the prayer you taught me [a well known Icelandic prayer is reproduced]. Your loving daughter”

What has caused this shift from the reserved and heroic account of Ari’s life to the personal heartfelt emotions in the letter from daughter to father?

At a practical level the new obituaries started to appear 1994 when the paper – in response to popular demand – relaxed the rules about what could be written. In the research a number of possibilities are explored, including the suggestion that it marks a shift in a society from one where identification with community has shifted to the personal and individual. This may well be true – but, for any of us working with the bereaved isn’t the shift familiar? The services we create here in the UK are increasingly personal, full of emotion and personal feelings directly expressed. 

If the changes can be traced to shifting social relationships in Iceland, what is driving the changes here in the UK? And when did we realise as a society that we wanted to do things differently? After Diana’s funeral perhaps?