coffins

The makes-you-proud-to-be-British way of death

2 January 2014
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: Atheism, Attitudes to death, burial, coffins

Alice Pitman, in the Christmas edition of the Oldie magazine, describes her extremely unwell 88 year-old mother rising to the occasion in hospital: 

Eventually a porter came and perfunctorily wheeled her to theatre. [We] followed down an interminably long corridor, the Aged P issuing instructions over her shoulder about what we were to do if she didn’t make it. Her will was in her knicker drawer. She wanted to be buried, not cremated. “I want the worms to eat me!” she exclaimed with reckless candour (a couple waiting for the lift looked horrified). “Don’t waste money on an expensive coffin. One of those cheap wicker ones will do. Oh, and no church service. I’m 99 per cent certain God doesn’t exist. In fact, scrap the funeral altogether. I don’t want one…” “It’s not up to you!” said [my husband], his stiff upper lip betraying a quiver of emotion. 

FOOTNOTE: Though her doctors abandon all hope for her, she survives. 

Spot the coffin

1 December 2013
Charles
16 Comments
Categories: coffins, Hearses

After last year’s annus horribilis, when the whiff of anything funereal on the telly had undertakers diving behind the sofa, it’s nice to see things return to normal.

Soaps are always a good source of funerals as are, of course, dead celebs. For the anoraks of Funeralworld, it’s fun to sit back and play spot-the-hearse. 

As with the recent publicity stunt for Sherlock Holmes Returns (BBC1, New Year’s Day). The photo at the bottom shows the hearse that drove around London last week publicising the resurrection. Whose hearse? Tadman’s, probably (the usual suspect in tellyfunerals).  

Over on Corrie, the upcoming funeral is that of transgender Hayley Cropper, married to Roy and suffering terminal pancreatic cancer. Hayley wants to end her life if it becomes unendurable. 

On Friday Hayley and Roy visited an undertaker’s at Hayley’s insistence. They didn’t like anything about the experience. Roy refused to engage. And then his spirit of denial gave way to a steely determination to make Hayley’s sendoff meaningful and not too expensive, and he started doing some research on the internet. The two of them had a heart to heart. Roy showed her what he’d been looking at and Hayley picked out the flowery coffin pictured at the top. For a bigger, clearer view have a look at this spoiler story in the Daily Star. 

This was the point at whch, back in real life, GFG website traffic suddenly surged, causing us to recall the media monitoring team from all manner of geekspots to the GFG-Batesville Shard. We don’t watch Corrie, we had no idea what was going on. The geeks soon tracked the origin of the activity, and we all sat and watched as people clicked through to our chosen coffin suppliers. 

It was remarkable. People who hadn’t realised you can find out this sort of stuff on the internet were googling away like mad. Bravo!

But back to you Funeralworld anoraks. Whose coffin is that, do you think? Who is the maker/supplier? 

Carry the coffin, it’ll help you carry on

22 November 2013
Charles
14 Comments
Categories: coffins, Featured

The Coffinmaker from Dan McComb on Vimeo.

“I think one of the most important aspects of the coffin is that it can be carried. And I think we’re meant to carry each other, and I think carrying someone you love, committing them, is very important for us that we deal with death; we want to know that we have played our part and that we have shouldered our burden. So, if we make it too convenient, then we’re depriving ourselves of a chance to get stronger so that we can carry on.”

“It changes the funeral from something you watch to something you do … All the coffins we use have working handles, six of them. This means that anyone can carry it without worrying about dropping it or not being the same height … If you want to be involved in a funeral, really involved, carry the coffin … Feel the uncompromising weight, the handles biting into your hand. Let your body form a physical memory of this moment … Feel what’s happening … You have honoured them with effort; you can do no more.” Rupert Callender. Listen to his Pause for Thought on BBC Radio Devon here. 

Corpse roads – then and now

20 October 2013
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, burial, coffins, funeral customs, Ghosts

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 using designated corpse roads. Some were just a few miles in length, others much longer. 

These medieval corpse roads, so called, were pre-dated by long, straight tracks found all over the world along which the dead were carried and which were reckoned to channel the spirits of the dead.

All manner of superstitions attach to corpse roads, and if you want to find out lots more, quickly, you can’t do better than turn to Wikipedia, which has an excellent entry on the phenomenon. The tradition of toting a corpse feet first derives from these superstitions. It was supposed the prevent the spirit of the dead person from legging it back home. It would be interesting to conduct a poll of undertakers to discover how many actually know this. 

A quick google reveals just some of the corpse roads — also called coffin roads, lych ways, etc — which remain walkable: 

The Lych Way in Devon

Hindon to Enford (Wilts)

Teffont to Dinton (Wilts)

Bohenie to Achluachrach

Pass of Glencoe to Dalness

Ulverston to Coniston

Wasdale Head to Eskdale via Burnmoor

Mardale (Haweswater) to Shap via the Goggleby Stone

Rydal to Grasmere via Rydal Water and Dove Cottage

Arnside to Beetham via the Fairy Steps

Johnby to Greystoke

Garrigill to Kirkland

Borrowdale to Brigham

Bellever to Lydford (Devon)

Zennor St Ives (Cornwall)

Aston to Blockley and Stretton to Blockley (Warks, Gloucs)

We still have working corpse roads, of course; we just don’t call them that. We call them the ring road or the bypass. 

One of you dyed-in-the-wool deathies out there ought to compile a gazetteer of corpse roads so that fellow-deathies everywhere can catch some fresh air and keep the memory alive. 

Pebbles in the press

12 September 2013
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: coffins

Gazette&HeraldSept12s

 

 

Davina Kemble’s pebble coffin has been featured in the Wiltshire Gazette and Herald. She’ll be on BBC Wiltshire next Thursday afternoon. If you click on the cutting it will leap up to a larger, more readable size. 

Work is love made visible

19 July 2013
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: coffins

“I think one of the most important aspects of the coffin is that it can be carried. And I think we’re meant to carry each other, and I think carrying someone you love, committing them, is very important for us that we deal with death; we want to know that we have played our part and that we have shouldered our burden. So, if we make it too convenient, then we’re depriving ourselves of a chance to get stronger so that we can carry on.”

Marcus Daly

Thanks to Chuck Lakin for alerting us to this.

What taught Chuck about death?

23 May 2013
Charles
No comments
Categories: Arranging a funeral, Attitudes to dead bodies, Attitudes to death, coffins, End-of-life issues, home funerals

We like Chuck Lakin at the GFG. We’ve blogged about him here and here. Here’s his reply to the question ‘When did you begin learning about death?’

The precipitating incident was the death of my own father. This was in 1979 and he was home for the last six week of his life, and I’m glad to say I was there for the last month of that. And he was in his own bed with his wife and four kids touching him. It has been a very personal experience up until that point. And I didn’t know it before that, but I knew I wanted to be a part of whatever happened next. But I didn’t know what I could do. So, we called a funeral director. And he did what I’m sure he thought we wanted him to do, which was arrive promptly and zip dad in a body bag and take him away and mail us a box of ashes four days later. And that disconnect was very important to me. And it was almost 20 years later that I found the information that I needed that told me what I could have done at the point. I started giving people the information that they needed to have if they wanted the experience that I wanted to have when my father died. It has evolved past that. I started out just talking about home funerals. Now, I’m big on planning and making choices. It’s about thinking about it and making sure it is written down and you’ve had a conversation with the family. If you haven’t transmitted the information about what you’d like to have happen to your body to anybody, those people are going to have to make a lot of potentially expensive or contentious decisions. It’s a tragedy and it’s very stressful for everybody. If you’ve made the plans ahead of time, it can be a spiritual time. It can give them a chance to grieve.

Full interview here. 

Diabolical liberties, that’s what they’re taking

12 May 2013
Charles
36 Comments
Categories: coffins, funeral cost

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.” Matthew 23:25

It seems appropriate to wax biblical in the matter of undertakers’ mark-ups for, verily, the people do tremble with ire and their eyeballs do start from their sockets whenever they discover that what they’re buying has got a little bit slapped on top.

These are the same people who readily accept that anything else they buy has been marked up to what the market can stand. Go to a restaurant. Price up the food on your plate. What would it cost you at Tesco? Call for the manager. Demand in a commanding tone to know why you are paying £25 for food you could buy for £4.83. The manager will speak of the cooking and the waitering and the washing up and the manifold overheads of running a high street premises. He may even conclude by saying, “If you don’t like it, cook your own or go to the kebab house on the corner.” He may even say something more direct. 

What’s the markup on anything? Answer: the normal retail markup is 50 per cent — ie, double the cost price. That doesn’t mean that an undertaker pays £100 for a coffin, charges £200 and takes £100 to the pub. Gross profit is what is left when overheads have been taken out. You’re unlikely to get much change from £100. Fashion goods, luxury items and Apple gadgets carry a much greater margin and no one gets into a moralising tizz about them.  

The cost of a coffin is no benchmark of an undertaker’s charges.  Cheap coffin = overhead cost absorbed by professional fee.

The best way to benchmark an undertaker’s charges is to get a quote for the job from your nearest Dignity plc undertaker and compare it with quotes from others. Seriously good value starts at Dignity minus £600. While you’re about it, take http://quotecorner.com/revia.html account of the value of great personal service. There is no reason whatever why an undertaker shouldn’t say “I charge more because I am worth it.” Let the market be the arbiter of that. 

Up in Scotland there’s a hoo-ha about the markup on cardboard coffins. One undertaker is charging £580. Scotmid charges £245. A Scotmid spokesperson said: 

“The cardboard coffins that we retail for £245, we buy in for between £80 and £100. Then we have other costs, VAT, delivery, we have to engrave the plate, line the interior, then we have to mark up the price as well. The cardboard coffins are not popular, we sell very few, and we have to mark the cost up or we wouldn’t be a business.” 

Scottish Conservative chief whip John Lamont accused funeral homes of “profiteering” at the expense of grieving families. He said: “This seems like a heavily excessive mark-up which would not be tolerated in other industries. Grieving families are probably in the worst possible frame of mind to spot this, and that’s perhaps why it happens. Funerals are not a cheap occurrence and with profiteering like this, it’s easy to see why.”

The use of the word ‘profiteering’ is highly subjective. Bereaved people are uneasy about the commodification of deathcare even though they don’t want to do it themselves. They think the normal commercial rules should be suspended. Well, they can’t be, not if you’re going to create a market for it. Even undertakers have to eat. You can’t have it both ways. 

Instead of berating undertakers for avarice and instilling in funeral shoppers a sense of grievance and entitlement, it would be far better for the likes of Mr Lamont to comment sensibly and urge consumers to shop around. As that Scotmid spokesperson said: “We have to mark the cost up or we wouldn’t be a business.”

Within a mile or two of any undertaker who is out to rip you off is one who isn’t. That’s the good news. Get it out there, Mr Lamont. 

Full story here. 

The opposite of death isn’t life; the opposite of death is birth

21 April 2013
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: coffins

We’ve written about Chuck Lakin here before. He’s a retired librarian and active woodworker with a line in plain pine coffins. Above all, he’s a lovely guy. 

He recently held a make-your-own-coffin workshop in his home town of Waterville, Maine. 

No one came. 

Lakin, 67, said he had planned to walk people through the process of building a coffin Saturday morning. He was going to hold the workshop with fellow natural-burial enthusiast Cam Weaver, of Mount Vernon.

Lakin said Barrels owner David Gulak told him there had been a lot of interest in the workshop. A lot of people had mentioned it over the past week or so.

Nobody signed up, however, and the event was canceled.

“They’re afraid of it. People will laugh about it nervously, but the people weren’t willing to recognize that it’s going to happen and say this is a natural part of life,” he said. “I see this all the time.”

More here. 

That bloody box

17 April 2013
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to dead bodies, Attitudes to death, coffins, funeral

“This was a funeral that celebrated unity. Like all other funerals. That bloody box: the awful finality: the dreadful unduckable certainty that life has to come to an end.

So of course it was the same today. We knew she was dead, and all of us, no matter how little interest we take in politics, have been talking about her life — and how some people thought she was great and some people thought she wasn’t and how some people thought a state funeral was great and how others thought it brought back the divisions of the 1980s. 

But in the end it was the usual infinitely solemn, infinitely banal parading of a box with the usual unspeakable contents. The flag and gun-carriage and the marching bands and the statuesque airmen with reversed arms outside the church of St Clement Danes in the Strand didn’t try to conceal the fact it contained death. 

Miners and policemen, tycoons and street-sleepers, liberals and authoritarians, winners and losers, wets and drys, warmongers and pacifists, the cruel and the compassionate, the bullies and the gentle: every funeral you ever go to reminds you that in the end there are no divisions between us. Death is the ultimate unity. 

Why should the funeral of Baroness Thatcher be any different?”

Simon Barnes in The Times