The funeral is usually held in the crematorium or cemetery chapel. (“They all have these horrid little chapels nowadays,” said Mr. Ashton.) The Ashton premises have a large room which he was intending to convert into use as a funeral chapel, but he found that there was so little demand for it that, instead, he uses it as a rest room. On an average, a “car and a half”—six to seven people—attend the funeral, although attendance varies tremendously; between two and three hundred may show up for the funeral of a prominent person. As in America, mourning is no longer worn except by the very old, who still think it proper to go out and buy “a bit of black” for the funeral. “Flowerwise,” said Mr. Ashton (once more springing this incongruous Americanism), he estimates that there would be an average of twenty floral pieces at an ordinary funeral. Workers spend a lot more on funeral flowers than do the middle classes; in fact, the latter tend to be more moderate in all ways.

If a country dweller happens to die in London, his body is generally taken back to his home parish for burial. A private motor hearse may be used, or the body may go back by rail. They fetch the coffin and take it to the station in a hearse. I asked whether embalming is required when a body is to be shipped. “If it’s to go by air, it’s got to be embalmed, but British Railways don’t require it; they’re not particularly fussy.”

An open-casket funeral is almost unheard of, said Mr. Ashton. Such a thing would be considered so absolutely weird, so contrary to good taste and proper behavior, so shocking to the sensibilities of all concerned, that he thinks it could never become a practice in England. He recalled the funeral of a Polish worker whose family requested an open casket: “The gravediggers objected very much to this. Rather absurd of them, when you come down to think of what their job is, don’t you know, but still they didn’t see why they should stand for having the thing opened. Cosmetics are never used. That sort of thing might go over in America, but really, I mean I don’t think you could get the people here to use it. If I had to say, ‘Come and see your loved one,’ I honestly don’t think I could keep a straight face.” Mr. Ashton added that Evelyn Waugh’s book The Loved Oneis one of his favorite novels, and that when it first came out he bought four copies for the amusement of his staff. But nevertheless, what about the adoption of certain American euphemisms—“funeral director” instead of “undertaker,” for example? Mr. Ashton thought that was originally instituted to stop the music-hall jokes about the trade, and because “the word ‘undertaker’ doesn’t mean anything.” He said that doctors and officials continue to use “undertaker,” although the telephone directory has recognized the new term and now has a listing for “funeral directors.” He added that some practitioners prefer “funeral director” simply because “it sounds more chichi, but personally I don’t mind.” As to other euphemisms—avoidance of words which connote death, “space” for “grave,” “expire” for “die,” “Mr. Jones” for “corpse,” and so on—he did not think these would catch on in England. “The attitude of the general public is, it’s a practical thing—if you don’t want to say anything about it, just don’t mention it.”

All this led directly to the subject of embalming; if there is to be no viewing, why then embalm? Mainly, for the convenience of the funeral establishment personnel. There is an average lapse of four to six days in London between death and the funeral (it takes one full day to get a grave dug), and, said Mr. Ashton, “the unpleasantness can be simply appalling.”

There is no restorative work done at Mr. Ashton’s place, and no cosmetics are used. Although he embalms routinely, without seeking permission of the family, he has not had any complaints. Over the past ten years, there have been perhaps three people who have specifically requested that there be no embalming. “When there’s been a long series of operations before death, somebody may say, ‘I don’t want ’er cut apaht anymore,” he explained. He agreed that the argument that embalming benefits the public health by preventing disease is not well founded: “We’ve tried to prove the disease factor, but we just can’t—we’ll have to accept the pathologists’ view on that.”

The complicated procedures required by English law relating to obtaining the death certificate have often been condemned; I wondered whether there were any efforts afoot to get the law changed. Quite abortively, said Mr. Ashton, there are attempts in that direction; in fact, he himself is a member of a Home Office “working party” initiated by the cremation authorities to simplify the law and speed up the process of getting a death certificate. “But I’m absolutely outnumbered on that,” he said cheerfully. “The doctors are dead against it, because the embalming process can hide certain poisons, make crime detection very difficult.”

Having in mind the “do-it-yourself” efforts of certain American funeral reform groups, I asked whether in England it would be possible for a survivor to bypass the funeral establishment altogether and take the deceased directly to the crematorium. Such a thing actually did happen once in Mr. Ashton’s experience. Two young men drove up in a Bedford van and said they wanted to buy a coffin. Mr. Ashton told them he didn’t sell coffins, he sold funerals. The young men insisted they did not wish a funeral; their mother had died, they had procured a properly issued death certificate, they had been out to the Enfield Crematorium to make arrangements, they intended to buy a coffin and take the mother out there themselves. “We chatted and chatted,” Mr. Ashton recalled. “Finally I was convinced they were on the level, so I sold them a coffin. What could I do? They weren’t doing anything wrong, there was nothing to stop them. But it really shook me. Afterwards I rang up the chap at the crematorium. I said, ‘Did that shake you? It shook me.’ ”

My final question was about “pre-need” arrangements; is there much buying and selling of graves and funeral services to those in the prime of life? Practically none, it seems. You can reserve a grave space, but it is almost never done. Once in a great while, said Mr. Ashton, some old lady may come round to the establishment, explain she is all alone in the world and feeling poorly, and ask him to care for all arrangements when her day comes. “We just put her name in our NDY file,” he said. “Meaning?” “Not Dead Yet, don’t you know. But nine times out of ten she’ll start feeling much better, might live another twenty years.”

Throughout our discussion Mr. Ashton impressed me as a realistic businessman, a kindly and responsible person, straightforward and practical in his approach to his work, with a good dash of wit in his makeup. One cannot even quarrel with the innovations he has introduced; the pleasant appearance of his premises is undoubtedly an improvement over years ago. It reflects concern for the comfort of those he must deal with, but does not remotely approach the plush palaces of death to be found everywhere in America. Whatever one may think of his practice of embalming all comers, at least he advanced truthful and comprehensive reasons for doing so.

If Mr. Ashton is a typical representative of the English undertaking trade, traditional English attitudes towards the disposal of the dead may after all be safe from the innovators for some time to come. [22]

Funerals in England Now

A cartoon depicts a group of sorrowing goldfish gathered round a lavatory bowl in which one of their number floats belly-up. The caption: “He always wanted an open casket.” Another shows two somberly suited pallbearers shouldering a casket, each wearing an outsize button inscribed HAVE A NICE DAY. One exclaims, “Always dreaded an American takeover.” Thus with a mixture of groans and ridicule was the advent of SCI greeted in the British press in 1994, the year in which SCI acquired two of the largest British funeral chains, the felicitously named Plantsbrook Group and the Great Southern Group, comprising more than five hundred undertaking establishments, cemeteries, and crematoria: