Funeral director

“ In general, at the funeral of a man, the part of chief mourner and director of the ceremonies is taken by a brother or son of the deceased. At the funeral of a woman the husband takes the chief place.
While the mourning is going on, a ceremony will have been performed if the dead person should be a man or woman whose spouse is still alive. The husband of a dead woman goes to one of his paiol, most commonly to his father-in-law, if he is living, and the paiol draws up the cloak of the widower so that it covers his head. ”

“ It is a little difficult to write a critical notice of a funeral office, simply because people's feelings are so much bound up in it that any criticism seems a cruelty, and any interference seems an impertinence. Round the open grave all controversy should be hushed, that no jarring sounds may mingle with the sobs of the mourners, and no quarrels wring the torn hearts of the survivors. ”

“ The funeral pageant moves,—a dozen carriages preceded by mourners on foot, clad in white, their heads covered, their feet bare, their grief insupportable, so that an attendant is at hand to sustain each mourner howling at the wheels of the hearse. An orchestra heads the procession; the air is flooded with paper prayers that are cast hither at you to appease the troubled spirit. ”

“ Weeks, and sometimes months, intervened before the friends and relatives could be convened with sufficient pomp and circumstance to satisfy the mourners. I have attended services embodying a long sermon, eulogistic of the deceased and admonitory of the living, when the poor mortal house of clay had mouldered in the grave for half a year. I actually knew of one funeral of a wife that was postponed by untoward circumstances until, when a sympathizing community was convoked to listen to the sermon, the ex-widower sat in the front seat as chief mourner with a second wife and her baby beside him. ”

“ He must be buried as "society" is buried. He must have a fashionable funeral. He must, to the last, bear witness to the power of Mrs. Grundy. It is to please her, that the funeral cloaks, hatbands, scarves, mourning coaches, gilded hearses, and processions of mutes are hired. And yet, how worthless and extravagant is the mummery of the undertaker's grief; and the feigned woe of the mutes, saulies, and plume bearers, who are paid for their day's parade! ”

“ Exaggeration is to be deprecated in mourning as in everything. The discarding of mourning should be effected by slow stages. It shocks persons of good taste to see a widow change into colors hurriedly. If black is to be dispensed with, let its retirement be slowly and gracefully marked by quiet costumes, as the grief, yielding to time, is giving way to resignation and cheerfulness.
Before a funeral the ladies of a family see no one but the most intimate friends. The gentlemen, of course, see the clergyman and officials who manage the ceremony. ”

“ In 1899, immediately after death in a family one of the first duties was to purchase a casket and arrange with an undertaker for the funeral. In their unhappy frame of mind, with hearts bowed in grief, undertakers often made terms their own way with mourners. ”

“ Of course, some of these invalids succumb, and from time to time a death occurs; but a funeral is seldom or never seen. When a death happens, the hotel people keep it as long quiet as possible. The authorities take charge of the burial, and the body, which must lie unburied twenty-four hours after death, is removed in a coffin after dark to the mortuary adjoining the cemetery, where the relations assemble usually on the following day, and it is buried. ”

“ If the hat is worn, it must be removed as the coffin passes from the hearse to the church, when the guests form a double line, down which it is carried, and the same line and observance must be made after the service, as the coffin is carried from the church to the hearse again.
If lady friends attend a funeral, if they are not in mourning, they should wear grave, quiet colors. To go to a funeral in a gay dress is insulting. ”

“ So the custom of funeralizing the dead long after burial grew from a necessity. The funeralizing of a departed kinsman or friend was published from the pulpit. The bereaved family set a day, months or even a year in advance, for the purpose of having the preacher eulogize their beloved dead. “Come the third Sunday in May next summer,” a mountain preacher could be heard in mid winter publishing the occasion. “Brother Tom’s funeral will be held here at Christy Creek church house.” ”

“ The chief mourner, however, if a woman, keeps the house, and sees no one after the funeral for a space that may extend to three weeks. It is indeed very difficult to persuade a mourner to leave the house. ”

“ These walking funerals are far more imposing and affecting spectacles than the hearse with its funeral plumes; and the simple fact of friends and neighbours conveying a departed brother to his long home, has a more solemn and touching effect upon the mind, than the train of hired mourners and empty state-carriages.
When a body is brought from a distance for interment, it is conveyed in a waggon, if in summer, spring, or autumn, and on a sleigh during the winter season, and is attended to the grave by all the respectable yeomen in the township. ”

“ Thus, the members of the bereaved family should be left as nearly alone to their grief as possible. Nothing in the nature of business should be thrust upon them. A male member of the family should take complete charge; or the immediate duties may be left in the hands of the nearest outside relatives. But whoever does take charge should see that the family is not troubled with the minor details, and that the funeral ceremony is carried out according to the family's pre-confided wishes. ”

“ The bodies of adults who are taken direct from the house of mourning to the grave, must be borne in the funeral carriage to the gate of the cemetery, where the bearers will convey the coffin to the grave.
The dead who have been placed in the house of reception must be borne in the same manner to the grave.
In exceptional cases, the dead may be borne to the grave by other persons; but this is only allowed when there is any particular cause of sympathy with the dead, or with the surviving family, and it must be free of all expense. ”

“ The funeral was scrupulously held before the second sun went down, and had to be hurried a little, because the morgue authorities, hobbled of red tape, move as slowly as the sea itself in giving up the dead. The coffin—of poorest pine—was knocked to pieces in the grave, before the clods of earth were shoveled in and the doomsday sods laid on. The garments of him who acted as principal mourner were faithfully torn; that is to say, the rabbi cut a careful slit in the lapel of that mourner's waistcoat where it wouldn't show. ”

“ Between three and four o'clock in the morning I took my family there, that they might see the face of our beloved martyr, and we had to take our place in a line as far away as Park Row. It is impossible to give any adequate description of the funeral—whose like was never seen before or since—when eminent authors, clergymen, judges and distinguished civilians walked on foot through streets, shrouded in black to the house tops. The whole journey to Springfield, Ill., was one constant manifestation of poignant grief. The people rose in the night, simply to see the funeral train pass by. ”

“ Guests invited to a funeral must not present themselves before the hour appointed, when the corpse is generally exposed for the last gaze of the friends. It is customary for the family to pay their last visit to the coffin just before that hour, and all intrusion is against the customs of society. ”

“ To the number of about twenty we assembled round the end of the house to escape the bitter wind, and here I lost the precentor, who, as an Auld Licht elder, joined the chief mourners inside. The post of distinction at a funeral is near the coffin; but it is not given to every one to be a relative of the deceased, and there is always much competition and genteelly concealed disappointment over the few open vacancies. ”

“ Before I made my sermon at the evening vespers, as is customary at every transport of the dead, I communicated to my parish people that later on a dead Pole would be transported from the hospital to the morgue, because the people want to know who is the dead, who is in the coffin in order to be able to know whether they have any obligation to attend the funeral or not. ”

“ And he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”
When the bier, with the casket, was set down before the altar, and the chief mourners—the two sons of the deceased, who had followed it—had taken their seats in the rectory pew, then the funeral services, conducted by the curate, went on to their solemn ending.
At the close the parishoniers came out of their pews in an orderly manner, and passing on from the right to the left before the casket, took their last look at the mask of their deceased pastor. ”

“ I could usually pacify the steward and put off the superintendent, but if it was a messenger from some remote neighborhood on the circuit come to say that Brother Beatem was dead and the family wanted Brother Thompson to conduct the funeral services next morning at the nearest Methodist church I would be obliged to give in, even if William was in the very heat of spiritual constructions. For a funeral is a thing that cannot be put off. ”

“ There should be no loud talking or confusion while the body remains in the house. All differences and quarrels must be forgotten in the house of mourning, and personal enemies who meet at a funeral must treat each other with respect and dignity. The bell knob or door handle is draped with black crape, with a black ribbon tied on, if the deceased is married or advanced in years, and with a white ribbon, if young or unmarried.
THE FUNERAL SERVICES.
If the services are held at the house, some near friend or relative will receive the guests. ”

“ All mourners’ carriages were propelled by electricity. The automobile containing the minister, led the procession, then followed the hearse and carriages of the mourners. In 1999, when a funeral passed by, people on the streets at the time were always careful to remove their hats as a mark of respect to the ashes of the deceased. This was a concession to common decency almost wholly unknown in the days of burials. People living in 1899 should not be too severely criticised in their lack of respect for the dead in the matter of uncovering as a funeral procession passed by. ”

“ With the upper classes, a corpse excites feelings of awe and respect; with the lower orders, in these districts, it is often treated with as little ceremony as the carcase in a butcher’s shop. Nothing can exceed their desire for an imposing funeral; nothing can surpass their efforts to obtain it; but the deceased’s remains share none of the reverence which this anxiety for their becoming burial would seem to indicate. ”

“ At the front of the funeral procession walk the noisy, musicless musicians; then come men (they may be friends, they may be coolies) bearing the insignia of the dignity of the dead, if he had any. Next walk more men carrying figures of animals, idols, umbrellas, and blue and white streamers. After them come men carrying pans of perfume. Just before the coffin walk bonzes—Chinese priests. Over the coffin a canopy is usually carried. The casket is borne by about a score of men. Immediately after the coffin walk the children of the deceased. ”

“ The company came—the corpse was placed in a velvet hearse—eighteen coaches were in attendance, filled with mourners.—As they were about to move, the young Lord Jeffries, son of the Chancellor, with a band of rakes, coming by, and learning that the funeral was Dryden’s, said the ornament of the nation should not so be buried, and proceeded, accompanied by his associates, in a body, to wait upon the widow, and beg her to permit him to bear the expense of the interment, and to pay one thousand pounds, for a monument, in the Abbey. ”

“ The preparations for a funeral in the house are committed to the care of an undertaker, who removes the furniture from the drawing-room, filling all the space possible with camp-stools. The clergyman reads the service at the head of the coffin, the relatives being grouped around. The body, if not disfigured by disease, is often dressed in the clothes worn in life, and laid in an open casket, as if reposing on a sofa, and all friends are asked to take a last look. It is, however, a somewhat ghastly proceeding to try to make the dead look like the living. ”

“ Those were stirring times, when every man had an eye to business, and could hardly afford to spare it long enough to wink. It is related of a certain minister who was officiating at a funeral that, while standing by the coffin offering the final prayer, he noticed one of the mourners kneeling upon the loose earth recently thrown from the grave. ”

“ It is too large a subject for us to enter into here, and it would profit us little, for the day of hired mourners and splendid pageantry together with obtrusive music and gorgeous flowers is past. Simplicity characterizes the entire service among well-bred people everywhere. The music is soft and the flowers in many cases are sent to the hospitals where they may gladden the sufferers there instead of being allowed to wilt neglected on the grave. More often than not, nowadays, there is added to the notice of the funeral which is inserted in the newspapers the sentence, "Please omit flowers." ”

“ As the deceased chief was a very great man it was necessary to postpone his burial for a month or two until fitting arrangements for a grand funeral could be conveniently made, otherwise his spirit would not be satisfied, and trouble would follow. ”