Prelims

Half Title Page

The Evolution of the British Funeral Industry in the 20th Century: From Undertaker to Funeral Director

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EMERALD STUDIES IN DEATH AND CULTURE

Series Editors: Ruth Penfold-Mounce, University of York, UK; Julie Rugg, University of York, UK; Jack Denham, University of York St John, UK

Editorial Advisory Board: Jacque Lynn Foltyn, National University, USA; Lisa McCormick, University of Edinburgh, UK; Ben Poore, University of York, UK, Melissa Schrift, East Tennessee State University, USA; Kate Woodthorpe, University of Bath, UK

Emerald Studies in Death and Culture provides an outlet for cross-disciplinary exploration of aspects of mortality. The series creates a new forum for the publication of interdiscipli-nary research that approaches death from a cultural perspective. Published texts will be at the forefront of new ideas, new sub-jects, new theoretical applications and new explorations of less conventional cultural engagements with death and the dead.

Forthcoming titles

Tim Bullamore, The Art of Obituary Writing

Ruth Penfold-Mounce, Death, the Dead and Popular Culture Matthew Spokes, Jack Denham and Benedikt Lehmann, Death, Memorialization and Deviant Spaces

Title Page

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BRITISH FUNERAL INDUSTRY IN THE 20TH CENTURY

FROM UNDERTAKER TO FUNERAL DIRECTOR

Brian Parsons

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2018

Copyright © Brian Parsons, 2018

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78743-630-5 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78743-629-9 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78743-672-5 (Epub)

Contents

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Abbreviations

Publications:

Trade Associations:

Others:

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge the help of the following in the writing of this book:

Wellcome Library; London Library; British Library Newspaper Library; National Archive; New England Institute at Mount Ida College; David Kaye; Jacqui Lewis; Julie Callender and Tim Morris at the ICCM; the Revd. Dr. Peter Jupp; Dr. Julie Rugg; Stephen White; staff at J.H. Kenyon (the late Simon Constable and Dr. Philip Smyth); the late Barry Albin; Bunny and Michael France; Andrew and Peter Miller; Professor Robin Theobald; Jeremy and Charlie Field; colleagues at the Univer-sity of Bath, particularly Dr. Kate Woodthorpe and Dr. John Troyer; Dr. Pam Fisher; Christopher Henley for access to material from his late father Des Henley; Jason Downing; Robert Lodge; Adrian Haler; the Revd Paul Sinclair; Sam Kershaw; Drawn Trigg and Sue Harvey at the F.W. Paine Museum in Kingston; Dean Reader and Sandra Mitchell of the Classic Hearse Register.

Preface

In 1963, Robert Habenstein and William Lamers published The History of American Funeral Directing. Now in its sixth edition, the volume traces the origins of funeral service in the United States from the Egyptians to contemporary times. The subject has since been brought even further up-to-date by Gary Laderman’s Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America. This side of the Atlantic, those wishing to investigate a similar period of history need only refer to Julian Litten’s authoritative work The English Way of Death: The Common Funeral Since 1450. His survey, however, concludes towards the end of the nineteenth century. The intention of this book is to start at this point by providing a comprehensive account of how funeral service developed in Britain during the following 110 years. In a period that has seen a shift from burial to cremation, the replacement of the horse-drawn hearse by motor vehicles, the introduction of embalming and the growth of large funeral firms operating on a centralised basis, there has also been an increasing preference by the industry for the description ‘undertaker’ to be replaced with ‘funeral director’. Endorsing the desire to be perceived as a professional, this new term reflects the increase in responsibility and complexity of funerals acquired during the twentieth century.

This book draws together research I have carried out over the last 20 years. Some material was presented in 1997 to the University of Westminster as a thesis entitled ‘Change and Development in the British Funeral Industry, with Special Reference to the Period 1960– 1990’. Teaching on the foundation degree in Funeral Service at the Uni-versity of Bath prompted the revision of the original along with new material, a move greatly assisted by unlimited access to the Undertakers’ Journal/Funeral Service Journal and the BUA Monthly/National Funeral Director/Funeral Director Monthly.

The development of the British funeral industry is a vast subject. It is hoped that this first text on the subject will provide a good starting point for anyone wishing to become acquainted with a fascinating but largely unexplored part of our social and industrial history.

Brian Parsons