Dead and Gone
We’ve been pondering on an important subject. In 21st century Britain, many of us may not have seen or spent time with the body of someone who has died. We may not have witnessed the profound absence of person in the familiar features of a corpse, nor experienced the thoughts and emotions of being in […]
Care of the Deceased Award 2017
Formerly the Embalmer of the Year award, this category now accommodates all aspects of caring for the dead. With a number of finalists, the judges were impressed with the calibre of care and dedication shown towards all those in their care, and some of the testimonials received demonstrate just how important this is to […]
Anatomical Pathology Technician of the Year 2017
This category had one of the smaller number of finalists, something that the judges found disappointing because the work carried out by APTs is so important. What goes on behind the mortuary doors is clearly still something of a mystery, but the runner up and winner this year are both working hard to change this. […]
Mortuary Assistant of the Year
Louise Milligan Louise Milligan, bereavement services and mortuary manager at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, is a shining example of caring mortuary assistant whose behind-the-scenes role means that her work is rarely seen by members of the public. In the case of Louise, the testimony of one member of the public explains why she is […]
General Election blues … and greens
Posted by Richard Rawlinson With Funeralworld including many small businesses, will their owners and employees be voting in the 7 May General Election for the party they feel supports the UK’s 4.9 million small businesses the most? But what can a government actually do other than make supportive noises encouraging enterprise, and championing the role of […]
Bring on the empty corpses
Book review: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty Caitlin Doughty, graduate in medieval history and author of a sunny thesis entitled The Suppression of Demonic Births in Late Medieval Witchcraft Theory, rejects a promising career in academia in favour of one as a corpse handler and incinerator of the dead. Anticipating bewilderment she asks, […]
Portrait of a deaf man
Posted by Vale I was listening to a programme about the recordings John Betjeman made with Jim Parker, setting his verse to some glorious music. Until they played this, though, I’d forgotten how dark Betjeman could be. On A Portrait Of A Deaf Man The kind old face, the egg-shaped head, The tie, discretely loud, […]
Imagine this: when someone dies we don’t hand them over to strangers
When the GFG, in conjunction with the Plunkett Foundation, announced a community funerals initiative back in 2012, we supposed that someone might pick it up and run with it. The Plunkett Foundation, far cleverer than us, was pretty confident they would. They contacted all their community shops and community pubs and we waited with bated breath […]
Corpse roads – then and now
Back in the middle ages, established churches hung on to their right to bury the dead when new churches were built nearby to serve a growing population. Burial rights brought in revenue. This meant that parishioners of churches without a right to bury their dead were compelled to take them to a church which did […]
Historical perceptions of a disreputable trade
The following is extracted by a PhD thesis by Sarah E Bond. It describes the social status of funeral workers in earlier times, particularly in ancient Rome where, we discover, FSOs were often employed, also, as executioners. According to an inscription from Puteoli dated to the first century BCE: “The operae (workers) who shall be provided […]
