When eulogies go too far
Posted by Richard Rawlinson Mafia funerals in churches intrigue. Any congregation inevitably includes an eclectic mix of faces in the pews, but the mobsters and molls at a gangster funeral turn the nave into something else. They’re totally welcome, of course, and are likely to be behaving with perfect decorum, but you still can’t help projecting […]
More than meets the eye
Yesterday’s Mail, among others, carried the pic, above, of Ronnie Biggs greeting the press at the funeral of fellow train robber Bruce Reynolds attended by the great and good of the criminal underworld. Check out the scene here. Bruce Reynolds’ son Nick is a member of the Alabama Three whose song Woke Up This Morning is the […]
Double standards?
There’s a very characteristic Daily Mail story in, of all places, today’s Daily Mail. It describes outrage in the environs of Wisbech concerning the ‘floral tributes’ which adorned the funeral of a notably industrious armed robber, Thomas Curtis. One of the tributes, above, took the form of an ATM machine of the sort that Mr […]
Taking a shirt from the Reaper
The funeral yesterday of south London underworld luminary Charlie Richardson. Among the mourners was ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser. The Richardson gang, led by Charlie and his brother Eddie, was noted, in its heyday in the sixties, for its compliance process, which included, according to the Mail, “torturing enemies at their scrap metal yard by attaching electrodes […]
Publishing event of the year!
The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, […]
Sal-ute
Yesterday’s funeral of mafia aristo Salvatore ‘Sal the Ironworker’ Montagna was notable for the thinness of the attendance — in contrast to the hundreds who turned up to say farewell to Nicolo Rizzuto Sr in November last year. Montagna was shot last Thursday as he left a house on Ile Vaudry. Mortally wounded, leapt into […]
A picture tells a thousand lies
The Daily Mail captioned a photo of the Mark Duggan funeral A salute to a ‘soldier’: Mourners lined the streets and raised their palms to say farewell to the father-of-four. Implicit was the allegation that this was a gangster salute, something guaranteed to send surges of fear and loathing through the indignation-hungry hearts of its chav-porn-addicted […]
Yakuza funeral
Posted by Charles Belgian photographer Anton Kusters has just finished a project following a yakuza family. Yakuza? Japanese organized criminals. More here. A magazine journalist asked Kusters this question: Photographically, what was the most powerful situation that you encountered during this project? He replied: The funeral, which was mind-blowing. I got a phone call that […]
Westie goes west
I know a lot of you like a good gangster funeral. This one’s not premier cru, but it’s not bad. “My father was no saint,” Ryan McElroy, one of Mr. McElroy’s three children, said in a eulogy. “But people said he could light up a room. He’s been away 15, 20 years, and you still […]
Respect
I know you all enjoy a good mobster funeral. Here’s one in Montreal, scheduled for today. A regular attendee of Mob and other funerals in a landmark Little Italy church issued a fearless prediction on the eve of Monday’s 11 a.m. service for Nicolo Rizzuto Sr. “It’ll be full,” Tony Romano, 81, said confidently Sunday […]
