Thoughts of a funeral-goer
Just over a week ago Daisy asked me to go with her to visit her neighbour John so we could help with the arrangements for his wife’s funeral. Barely had we stepped across the threshold when Daisy disappeared down the hall with a cheery, ‘I’ll make us a nice cup of tea shall I?’ I […]
Statement from Phillip Greenfield Funeral Partners
Phillip Greenfield, Chief Executive of Funeral Partners and owners of Gillman’s Funeral Directors who featured in last night’s Exposure programme of ‘The British Way of Death’ has made a video statement of the company’s response to the revelations. The full text of what he says can be found on the Funeral Partners website here. Two […]
Is it fair to portray our funeral industry in this way?
“That Funeral Director on your local High Street that looks like a trustworthy and caring family run business probably isn’t…this is an unregulated world in desperate need of reform.” Fair comment? You can read the ITV news http://www.honeytraveler.com/buy-propecia/account of the programme here. All responses welcome — we practise no censorship here. Please do not make […]
Rum do in the valleys
A burglar is engaged in his work of ransacking a chapel wherein lies a dead person awaiting their funeral. He is disturbed, mid-rampage, by the arrival of the undertaker coming to get everything ready for the service. The burglar, panicked, attempts to climb into the coffin… What happens next? Read the unlikely, unsavoury and true […]
Know your foe
Overheard at the Joy of Death convention: “I wish all these conventional funeral directors weren’t here, I think this event should only be for progressives.” My heart sank. We don’t need another postcode gang in Funeralworld. It’s beginning to feel like Peckham. Name-calling, in-fighting, backstabbing. Somebody ought to do something about it. And scapegoating. There are […]
One of our own
Marilyn Watts died at 4.30 in the morning on Tuesday. She had been suffering from cancer. Well known to many in the world of funerals, she was Anne Barber’s right-hand person at Civil Ceremonies and was instrumental, together with Anne and Professor Tony Walter, in creating a pioneering training programme for funeral celebrants designed to […]
When words fail
Posted by Richard Rawlinson As both mother of a son with learning disabilities and also Professor of Psychiatry of Disability at St George’s, University of London, Baroness Hollins is well qualified to be founder and editor of the Books Beyond Words series, which communicates through pictures difficult messages to people with learning disabilities, including the topics […]
Low cost is the price of low value
Barnet funeral experts are unsurprised by news that London is the most expensive place in the country to die. Emma Sargant, Director of Churchills Family Funeral Directors in East Barnet Road said: “I haven’t put my prices up since 2008.” However, Barry Broad of Brooks Funerals in Church Hill Road said there are options for […]
What constitutes corpse abuse?
We don’t have abuse of a corpse laws in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, nor Scotland, not like they do in the US. Indeed, the laws around what you can, can’t and must do with a corpse in the UK are few — so few that we’ve never managed to discover what they are. Perhaps […]
Keeping in with the in-breath
Caroline Goyder, voice coach to the stars and lesser luminaries, asked us to call to mind the person we love most. Did you notice, she asked after we’d done it, that you marked their arrival in your mind with a little in-breath? Did you? When you’re speaking in public, she says, you need to preface […]
