There was a study course available, a fairly comprehensive text of some seventy-five mimeographed pages, prepared by members of the trade for the “voluntary examination in funeral directing.” Since there is no law in England requiring licensing of undertakers, the study course and examination are in effect an exercise in self-improvement rather than, as in America, a legal requirement.
The study course, like the trade publications, is a strange mixture of old and new concepts about the disposal of the dead, English and American terminology, the traditional English approach combined with aspects of the American Way.
How refreshing to read, for example, that “it is not the function of the funeral director to become the family sympathiser but rather to offer helpful advice.” And that while it is permissible to let the family know that a private chapel is available on the premises for the service, it is “very wrong to be over-persuasive in this matter”; that if they are regular church attenders, “it is certainly good practice to suggest that the Service be held in their own church. This is appreciated by the family and the Clergy.” Equally permissive—in contrast to the attitude of the American burial industry—is the position on cremated remains (“cremains” has not yet found its way across the Atlantic); this is a “matter for the family to decide. The majority seem to prefer the scattering of the cremated remains in the Garden of Remembrance attached to all Crematoria” or at some other spot of their choice. Sentimentality is positively discouraged. Discussing obituary notices, the study course cautions: “In some cases, one is requested to insert over-sentimental verses, and all the Funeral Director’s tact is called upon to dissuade them in their own interest.”
Some agreeably down-to-earth advice was offered about the proper treatment of the corpse itself: “Dress in clean clothing—pyjamas, shirt or nightdress, etc…. Insert the laying out board under the body…. DO NOT TIE THE BIG TOES TOGETHER…. IN NO CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER SHOULD THE ARMS AND HANDS BE SECURED BY POSITIONING THEM UNDER THE BUTTOCKS…. DO NOT PLACE PENNIES OR WET PACKS OVER THE EYES.”
However, there are indications that a new day may soon dawn for the dead in England. A large portion of the course is devoted to the importance of embalming and how to sell it to a reluctant client, apparently best accomplished by not being frank. The words “hygienic treatment,” it is suggested, should be used in discussing the subject with the client: “By this, of course, you mean modern arterial embalming, but funeral directors are generally agreed that in the early stages of the arrangement, the use of the word ‘embalming’ is best avoided…. Although some funeral directors boldly speak of embalming, the majority consider it preferable to describe the treatment by some such term as ‘Temporary Preservation,’ ‘Sanitary Treatment,’ or ‘Hygienic Treatment.’ In this way it is felt that there is less likelihood of associating the modern science with that of the ancient Egyptians.”
The familiar justifications are offered for what one English authority has called “the meaningless practice of embalming”: it delays decomposition, it promotes public health, it restores a lifelike appearance. “The change effected is truly remarkable—gone is the deathly pallor… instead the family sees a life-like presentation of their loved one appearing as though peacefully sleeping. This result is a source of great comfort and has a decided psychological value.” Furthermore, the family may have “open casket or coffin at all times until closed for the Funeral.”
It is to the growing army of embalmers that we must turn for enlightenment on progress in introducing American funeral practices in England. Most English people are astonished to learn that embalming is sharply on the increase there. The British Institute of Embalmers claims over one thousand members. The uphill nature of their efforts to ply their trade can be inferred from an official statement issued by the institute: “Two primary factors have retarded progress. Primarily the fact that customs die hard in this country and in no case is this more evident than in funerals. The introduction of any new methods, apparatus or merchandise was treated with suspicion, not only by the mourners but often by the priest or minister conducting the funeral service…. Up to the present moment there has been little governmental support or recognition of the science. With exceptions, the medical profession ignore it….”
Hard is the lot of the really go-ahead embalmer in England. There is the unaccommodating English law, which requires that a death certificate be obtained and the death properly registered before the embalmer can get going. No chance there of getting started before life is completely extinct.
An English contributor to the American Professional Embalmerdescribes some of the roadblocks he has encountered. The main trouble seems to be that “the open-casket is unknown in this country…. The coffin is invariably closed at the funeral service proper and, more important still, the funeral director is frequently instructed at the first call to close the coffin immediately when the remains are placed in it. This lack of acceptance by the public of a fundamental American concept produces more than one difficulty for British embalmers; with no demand there can be no practice.”
English doctors, we learn, are most uncooperative: “The medical profession in Great Britain exercise a power second to none. Despite the National Health Service, and statements to the contrary, as a pressure group they are supreme… [T]hey would oppose with all the power at their command any attempt to limit autopsies. Indeed, no group can show more rooted opposition to modern funeral service and embalming in particular than this one. They stand squarely behind the cremation movement here, actively campaigning for it, doing all they can to reduce funeral service to little more than simple rubbish disposal.” Not only that, but the doctors are often unkind to the embalmers: “Except between friends and request by a funeral director or an embalmer, cooperation on the part of an examining surgeon will be wasted; if anything more than an ill-mannered rebuff is received it will be calculated obstruction carried even to the lengths of deliberate mutilation.”
With true British grit, the author ends on a note of hope for the future: “There can be no argument about it; in England the embalmer is out on his own and any progress he makes is over hard ground. That does not mean he is a quitter, however; far from it. At the moment satisfactory restoration is almost impossible to achieve but it will be achieved in the end, with help or without it, and no matter how far distant that end may be!” Rather bravely spoken, considering that achievement of the distant end apparently depends upon a complete reversal of the law, of public attitudes, and of views of the medical profession.
Some months after I had read about the ups and downs in the English undertaking trade, I had a chance to visit an English funeral establishment to check the vision against the reality. The very location of the one I visited, in changeless South London, seemed to foreshadow the attitudes I would find there. The West End may present a new façade from year to year—here an unfamiliar skyscraper under construction, there a block of service flats where before had stood the London mansion of some Scottish laird, everywhere the bright awnings and colored tablecloths of the newly imported espresso houses. South London remains the same: the haberdashery and furniture display in shopwindows might have been there for generations; the very buns in the cafés have a prewar flavor. “Clapham Road?” said the corner newspaper vendor whom I asked for directions. “Not far, just a nice twenty-minute walk; it’s just round from where my aunt’s lived for fifty years.” Not the sort of place, I thought, where people would be amenable to newfangled methods in any phase of life, let alone death; and in a way I believe I was right.