Attitudes to dead bodies

Talking to the dead

16 January 2012
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies

News from Malacca, Malaysia:

The small Gujerati community here fears the final rites practice which involves talking to the dead is dying because the young are not interested.

For one man, who has provided his services to bereaved families over the past 10 years, his only hope is his son.

“I must pass it down as I am getting old. I am afraid there will be no more replacement to manage the funeral rites for the community in future,” said Nishrint Chimanlal Ravichand, 48.

Nishrint, who has performed the last rites at more than 20 funerals, said part of the procedure requires one to talk to the dead.

“With a little practice and understanding of the Hindu scriptures, I am able to do it when conducting the final rites.

“I found that talking to the deceased makes my chores, like bathing and dressing the body, easier,” he said when met at his home in Banda Kaba, a village with heritage status within Malacca city.

Nishrint, who learnt the rites from his father and grandfather, said in most cases, the bodies are stiff and this makes it difficult for him to dress the corpse in white as required for a Hindu funeral.

“I communicate with the dead, requesting the deceased to relax so I can carry out my chores without problems,” he said.

Interesting, that. Here in the UK it is by no means unusual for an undertaker to talk to a corpse while laying it out.

In Malaysia, it seems, there is a superstition that “touching a body could lead to bad luck”. You’ll find a variant of that pretty much everywhere. But they also believe that touching a dead orphan can bring you a jinx.

Why orphans, we wonder?

Please help!

4 November 2011
Charles
No comments
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, Dress codes

Judith Simpson is a PhD student in the School of Design at the University of Leeds. 

She is researching the way in which the dead body is dressed, ‘styled’ and presented and how (or even if) this relates to what people believe about life and death. 

Here is Judith’s appeal to YOU: 

I am asking a number of funerary professionals for their observations on how customers ask their loved ones to be presented and for any opinions on why these requests are made. I would be extremely grateful if you could respond to the survey on the link below. If you are able to share the survey with colleagues in the industry that would be wonderful. I would also be delighted to capture the opinions of retired funerary professionals who may have witnessed significant change over their careers. 

There is a statement attached which explains the project and how its findings will be used; this has been approved by the University’s Ethics Committee and I trust it will allay any of your concerns. 

Before you take the survey, please read the statement below, which has been approved by the University’s Ethics Committee.  

The link to the survey is here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FHSP23F 

 

 

Informed Consent Form 

An Investigation Into Current Trends in Presenting and Viewing the Dead Body 

Purpose of the Study:

This is a study of contemporary social practices that is being conducted by Judith Simpson, a research student at the University of Leeds.  The purpose of this study is to examine what people of the early twenty first century believe to be the most appropriate way of dealing with the body between death and the point of burial or cremation.  My particular interest is in the way that the body is dressed and presented for viewing by family and friends.  I am interested in both the memories of people who have been involved in these processes and the opinions of the community in the widest sense.

What will be done:

You will complete one of a series of surveys, which will take 15-20 minutes to complete. The survey may include questions about

  • your own experience of arrangements made following a death
  • your opinions on historical practices or those of different cultures
  • your thoughts on ‘ideal’ funerary practices
  • your ideas about what specific customs might mean
  • your ideas about what happens when we die

I may also ask for some demographic information (e.g. age, gender, religious belief) so that I can consider whether, for example, the insights of women are different from those of men, or whether age has an influence on ideas about death).

Benefits of this Study:

You will be contributing to knowledge about how death is currently understood in Britain, and about the arrangements that ordinary families make in times of bereavement. 

Risks or discomforts:

No risks or discomforts are anticipated from taking part in this study. If you feel uncomfortable with a question, you can skip that question. Your participation is greatly valued but is completely voluntary.

Confidentiality:

Your responses will be kept completely confidential. I will not know your IP address when you respond to an online survey.  I will only have access to your email address or other contact details should you choose to enter them in response to an invitation to participate in a follow up interview.  If you do provide contact details these will only be used by the researcher and will not be disclosed to any third party.

The survey does not ask you to provide your name, and should any comments that you make be published in research papers you will be identified by a participant number only.

How the findings will be used:

The results of the study will be used for scholarly purposes only. The results from the study will be presented in educational settings and at professional conferences, and the results might be published in a professional journal.

Contact information:

If you have concerns or questions about this study, please contact Judith Simpson at sdjms@leeds.ac.uk or one of the project supervisors, Professor Efrat Tsëelon (e.tseelon@leeds.ac.uk) or Dr Judith Tucker (j.a.tucker@leeds.ac.uk).

By beginning the survey, you acknowledge that you have read this information and agree to participate in this research, with the knowledge that you are free to withdraw your participation at any time

Buried this day

31 October 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies

 

Joan Wytte was born in 1775 in Bodmin, Cornwall. She was sometimes called the “Fighting Fairy Woman” or the “Wytte (White) Witch”.

Joan was famed as a clairvoyant, and people would seek her services as a seer, diviner and healer. Her healing practices included the use of “clooties” (or “clouties”), strips of cloth taken from a sick person and tied to a tree or a holy well as a form of sympathetic magic, such that when the cloth rots, the disease was believed to dissipate.

Later in life, she became very ill-tempered as a result of a tooth abscess, and would shout and rail at people. She often became involved in fights where she exhibited remarkable strength and people came to believe she was possessed by the devil. She was eventually incarcerated in Bodmin Jail, not for witchcraft but for public brawling, and due to poor https://laparkan.com/buy-accutane/ conditions in the jail, Joan died of bronchial pneumonia at the age of 38.

Her bones were disinterred and used for séances and various pranks, then later displayed at the Witchcraft Museum in Boscastle, Cornwall. It is said that, while her skeleton was on display in the museum, they started to experience disruptive poltergeists, and a witch was bought in to advise them, who said that Wytte’s spirit wished to be laid in a proper burial. She was finally laid to rest in a peaceful wooded area in Boscastle, and her gravestone reads: “Joan Wytte. Born 1775. Died 1813 in Bodmin Jail. Buried 1998. No longer abused”. [Source]

Joan was buried on 31 October. 

Thanks to Belinda Forbes for this story. Joan is the subject of a lecture this evening at Arnos Grove, details here. 

Funnybones

28 October 2011
Charles
No comments
Categories: Art and death, Attitudes to dead bodies, Books, Ossuary

Posted by Vale

What is it with this fascination with bones and skeletons?

Faced with a pile of them and one man plasters into the walls and cornices, another creates chandeliers and shields while elsewhere anonymous skulls are given names, cleaned, polished and even appealed to for information.

Bones seem to be the acceptable face of death. Tangible reminders of course; a frisson of the macabre certainly, but once the Yorick lesson has been learned –  you might think there would be little more to add.

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let
her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must
come; make her laugh at that.

Except that there always is. Faye Dowling has published a wonderful Book of Skulls that, through images, explores our continuing fascination:

And, for the ossuary lovers, Thames and Hudson are publishing Empire of Death.

It brings together the world’s most important charnel sites, ranging from the crypts of the Capuchin monasteries in Italy and the skull-encrusted columns of the ossuary in Évora in Portugal, to the strange tomb of a 1960s wealthy Peruvian nobleman decorated with the exhumed skeletons of his Spanish ancestors.

And our old friend St Pancras is on the cover too.

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.

Meet St Pancras

13 October 2011
Charles
7 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies

 

St Pancras was beheaded in 304 during Diocletian’s persecution when he was only 14 years old. His skeleton was clothed in armour in 1777. He now resides at the Church of St Nikolaus in Wil, Switzerland.

Cash for corpses 2

11 October 2011
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, funeral cost

You heard it on the news? You read it in your newspaper? The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has published a report calling on the government to find out of people like the idea of getting a free funeral in exchange for donating their organs.

Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern, of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, says: “The possibility of sparing relatives the financial burden of a funeral might encourage more people to register as donors.”

The report rules out offering people an up-front cash inducement in exchange for agreeing to donate an organ or two sometime down the line.

The whole scheme is so fraught with contradictions you wonder how it ever saw the light of day. The point being that those who agree to donate organs cannot be sure where or how they are going to die; unless a person dies in hospital in pretty good health, their organs are no use.  No use = no funeral payment.

So no potential donor is going to be able to bank on a free funeral.

Which means that donors would be mad not to make provision for their funeral anyway. They may even do the dumb and trusting thing and buy a funeral plan or other financial product.

So when the cheque for three grand arrives, what does it go towards? Furnishings? White goods? A plasma TV?

It’s a turkey, Professor Dame Marilyn. And don’t give us this talk about rewards for altruism. Altruism is by definition its own reward.

An interesting thing about this report is that no one has picked up that it is not the first time the Nuffield Council has flown this kite. It first flew it in April 2010.

Guardian report here. Telegraph report here. Daily Mail report here. 

Euphemisms 1: Officials and officiousness

21 September 2011
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Art and death, Attitudes to dead bodies, Attitudes to death

Posted by Vale

Euphemisms are all about not facing up to reality. We like to think we use them for good reasons, but they have a darker side too. This poem, written by Harold Pinter in 1997, uses one of the words we often shy from, yet it too is a euphemism. It was written in the year that his own father died and I think that, writing about death in this way, he was describing something of his own experience of the way that deaths are managed and, in the midst of the form filling, the way that language can help us hide from what has happened and what we have both done and not done.

Because it is Pinter, of course, I think he was also making a point about the way that being ’official’, can lead to the denial of both feelings and humanity at many different levels. Of course the poem is an extreme version of unfeeling officiousness but does it remind you at all of the way that some funeral businesses handle their first contact with families?

Death (Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953)

Where was the dead body found? Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead? Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body Did you close both its eyes Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

The poem was silkscreen printed on 7 hospital bedsheets and 7 forensic dissection tables surrounded by the smell of lysol.