ADDRESS FROM AN UNDERTAKER TO THE TRADE
(STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.)
I address you, gentlemen, as an humble individual who is much concerned about the body. This little joke is purely a professional one. It must go no farther. I am afraid the public thinks uncharitably of undertakers, and would consider it a proof that Dr. Johnson was right when he said that the man who would make a pun would pick a pocket. Well; we all try to do the best we can for ourselves—everybody else as well as undertakers. Burials may be expensive, but so is legal redress. So is spiritual provision; I mean the maintenance of all our reverends and right reverends. I am quite sure that both lawyers' charges and the revenues of some of the chief clergy are very little, if any, more reasonable than our own prices. Pluralities are as bad as crowded gravepits, and I don't see that there is a pin to choose between the church and the churchyard. Sanitary revolutionists and incendiaries accuse us of gorging rottenness, and battening on corruption. We don't do anything of the sort, that I see, to a greater extent than other professions, which are allowed to be highly respectable. Political, military, naval, university, and clerical parties, of great eminence, defend abuses in their several lines when profitable. We can't do better than follow such good examples. Let us stick up for business, and—I was going to say—leave society to take care of itself. No; that is just what we should endeavor to prevent society from doing. The world is growing too wise for us gentlemen. Accordingly, this Interments Bill, by which our interests are so seriously threatened, has been brought into Parliament. We must join heart and hand to defeat and crush it. Let us nail our colors—which I should call the black flag—to the mast, and let our war-cry be, "No surrender!" or else our motto will very soon be, "Resurgam;" in other words, it will be all up with us. We stand in a critical position in regard to public opinion. In order to determine what steps to take for protecting business, we ought to see our danger. I wish, therefore, to state the facts of our case clearly to you; and I say let us face them boldly, and not blink them. Therefore, I am going to speak plainly and plumply on this subject.
There is no doubt—between ourselves—that what makes our trade so profitable is the superstition, weakness, and vanity of parties. We can't disguise this fact from ourselves, and I only wish we may be able to conceal it much longer from others. As enlightened undertakers, we must admit that we are of no more use on earth than scavengers. All the good we do is to bury people's dead out of sight. Speaking as a philosopher—which an undertaker surely ought to be—I should say that our business is merely to shoot rubbish. However, the rubbish is human rubbish, and bereaved parties have certain feelings which require that it should be shot gingerly. I suppose such sentiments are natural, and will always prevail. But I fear that people will by and by begin to think that pomp, parade, and ceremony are unnecessary upon melancholy occasions. And whenever this happens, Othello's occupation will, in a great measure, be gone.
I tremble to think of mourning relatives considering seriously what is requisite—and all that is requisite—for decent interment, in a rational point of view. Nothing more, I am afraid Common Sense would say, than to carry the body in the simplest chest, and under the plainest covering, only in a solemn and respectful manner, to the grave, and lay it in the earth with proper religious ceremonies. I fear Common Sense would be of opinion that mutes, scarfs, hatbands, plumes of feathers, black horses, mourning coaches, and the like, can in no way benefit the defunct, or comfort surviving friends, or gratify anybody but the mob, and the street-boys. But happily, Common Sense has not yet acquired an influence which would reduce every burial to a most low affair.
Still, people think no more than they did, and in proportion as they do think, the worse it will be for business. I consider that we have a most dangerous enemy in Science. That same Science pokes its nose into everything—even vaults and churchyards. It has explained how grave-water soaks into adjoining wells; and has shocked and disgusted people by showing them that they are drinking their dead neighbors. It has taught parties resident in large cities that the very air they live in reeks with human remains, which steam up from graves; and which, of course, they are continually breathing. So it makes our churchyards to be worse haunted than they were formerly believed to be by ghosts, and, I may add, vampyres, in consequence of the dead continually rising from them in this unpleasant manner. Indeed, Science is likely to make people dread them a great deal more than Superstition ever did, by showing that their effluvia breed typhus and cholera; so that they are really and truly very dangerous. I should not be surprised to hear some sanitary lecturer say, that the fear of churchyards was a sort of instinct implanted in the mind, to prevent ignorant people and children from going near such unwholesome places.
It would be comparatively well if the mischief done us by Science, Medicine and Chemistry, and all that sort of thing—stopped here. The mere consideration that burial in the heart of cities is unhealthy, would but lead to extramural interment, to which our only objection—though even that is no very trifling one—is that it would diminish mortality, and consequently our trade. But this Science—confound it!—shows that the dead do not remain permanently in their coffins, even when the sextons of metropolitan graveyards will let them. It not only informs Londoners that they breathe and drink the deceased; but it reveals how the whole of the defunct party is got rid of, and turned into gases, liquids, and mould. It exposes the way in which all animal matter as it is called in chemical books—is dissolved, evaporates, and disappears; and is ultimately, as I may say, eaten up by Nature, and goes to form parts of plants, and of other living creatures. So that, if gentlemen really wanted to be interred with the remains of their ancestors, it would sometimes be possible to comply with their wishes only by burying them with a quantity of mutton—not to say with the residue of another quadruped than the sheep, which often grazes in churchyards. Science, in short, is hammering into people's heads truths which they have been accustomed merely to gabble with their mouths—that all flesh is indeed grass, or convertible into it; and not only that the human frame does positively turn to dust, but into a great many things besides. Now, I say, that when they become really and truly convinced of all this; when they know and reflect that the body cannot remain any long time in the grave which it is placed in; I am sadly afraid that they will think twice before they will spend from thirty to several hundred pounds in merely putting a corpse into the ground to decompose.
The only hope for us if these scientific views become general, is, that embalming will be resorted to; but I question if the religious feelings of the country will approve of a practice which certainly seems rather like an attempt to arrest a decree of Providence; and would, besides, be very expensive. Hero I am reminded of another danger, to which our prospects are exposed. It is that likely to arise from serious parties, in consequence of growing more enlightened, thinking consistently with their religious principles, instead of their religion being a mere sentimental kind of thing which they never reason upon. We often, you know, gentlemen, overhear the bereaved remarking that they trust the departed is in a better place. Why, if this were not a mere customary saying on mournful occasions—if the parties really believed this—do you think they would attach any importance to the dead body which we bury underground? No; to be sure: they would look upon it merely as a suit of left-off clothes—with the difference of being unpleasant and offensive, and not capable of being kept. They would see that a spirit could care no more about the corpse it had quitted, than a man who had lost his leg, would for the amputated limb. The truth is—don't breathe it, don't whisper it, except to the trade—that the custom of burying the dead with expensive furniture; of treating a corpse as if it were a sensible being; arises from an impression—though parties won't own it, even to themselves—that what is buried is the actual individual, the man himself. The effect of thinking seriously, and at the same time rationally, will be to destroy this notion, and with it put an end to all the splendor and magnificence of funerals, arising from it. Moreover, religious parties, being particular as to their moral conduct, would naturally consider it wrong and wicked to spend upon the dead an amount of money which might be devoted to the benefit of the living; and no doubt, when we come to look into it, such expenditure is much the same thing with the practice of savages and heathens in burying bread, and meat, and clothes, along with their deceased friends.
I have been suggesting considerations which are very discouraging, and which afford but a poor look-out to us undertakers. But, gentlemen, we have one great comfort still. It has become the fashion to inter bodies with parade and display. Fashion is fashion; and the consequence is that it is considered an insult to the memory of deceased parties not to bury them in a certain style; which must be respectable at the very least, and cost, on a very low average, twenty-five or thirty pounds. Many, such as professional persons and tradespeople, who cannot afford so much money, can still less afford to lose character and custom. That is where we have a pull upon the widows and children, many of whom, if it were not for the opinion of society, would be only too happy to save their little money, and turn it into food and clothing, instead of funeral furniture.
Now here the Metropolitan Interments Bill steps in, and aims at destroying our only chances of keeping up business as heretofore. We have generally to deal with parties whose feelings are not in a state to admit of their making bargains with us—a circumstance, on their parts, which is highly creditable to human nature; and favorable to trade. Thus, in short, gentlemen, we have it all our own way with them. But this Bill comes between the bereaved party and the undertaker. By the twenty-seventh clause, it empowers the Board of Health to provide houses and make arrangements for the reception and care of the dead previously to, and until interment; in order, as it explains in a subsequent clause, to the accommodation of persons having to provide the funerals—supposing such persons to desire the accommodation. Clause the twenty-eighth enacts "That the said Board shall make provision for the management and conduct, by persons appointed by them, of the funerals of persons whose bodies are to be interred in the Burial Grounds, to be provided under this Act, where the representatives of the deceased, or the persons having the care and direction of the funeral, desire to have the same so conducted; and the said Board shall fix and publish a scale of the sums to be payable for such funerals, inclusive of all matters and services necessary for the same, such sums to be proportioned to the description of the funeral, or the nature of the matter and services to be furnished and rendered for the same; but so that in respect of the lowest of such sums, the funerals may be conducted with decency and solemnity." Gentlemen, if this enactment becomes law, we shall lose all the advantages which we derived from bereaved parties' state of mind. The Board of Health will take all trouble off their hands, at whatever sum they may choose to name. Of course they will apply to the Board of Health instead of coming to us. But what is beyond everything prejudicial to our interests, is the proviso "that in respect of the lowest of such sums, the funerals may be conducted with decency and solemnity." Hitherto it has been understood that so much respect could not be paid in the case of what we call a low affair as in one of a certain style. We have always considered that a funeral ought to cost so much to be respectable at all. Therefore relations have gone to more expense with us, than they would otherwise have been willing to incur, in order to secure proper respect. But if proper respect is to be had at a low figure, the strongest hold that we have upon sorrowing relatives will be taken away.
It is all very fine to say that we are a necessary class of tradesmen, and if this Bill passes must continue to be employed. If this Bill does pass we shall be employed simply as tradesmen, and shall obtain, like other tradesmen, a mere market price for our articles, and common hire for our labor. I am afraid that it will be impossible to persuade the public that this would not be perfectly just and right. I think, therefore, that we had better not attack the Bill on its merits, but try to excite opposition against it on the ground of its accessory clauses. Let us oppose it as a scheme of jobbery, devised with a view to the establishment of offices and appointments. Let us complain as loudly as we can of its creating a new rate to defray the expenses of its working, and let us endeavor to get up a good howl against that clause of it which provides for compensation to incumbents, clerks, and sextons. We must cry out with all our might upon its centralizing tendency, and of course make the most we can out of the pretense that it violates the sanctity of the house of mourning, and outrages the most fondly cherished feelings of Englishmen. Urge these objections upon church-wardens, overseers, and vestrymen; and especially din the objection to a burial rate into their ears. Recollect, our two great weapons—like those of all good old anti-reformers—are cant and clamor. Keep up the same cry against the Bill perseveringly, no matter how thoroughly it may be refuted or proved absurd. Literally, make the greatest noise in opposition to it that you are able, especially at public meetings. There, recollect a groan is a groan, and a hiss a hiss, even though proceeding from a goose. On all such occasions do your utmost to create a disturbance, to look like a popular demonstration against the measure. In addition to shouting, yelling, and bawling, I should say that another rush at another platform, another upsetting of the reporter's table, another terrifying of the ladies, and another mobbing the chairman, would be advisable. Set to work with all your united zeal and energy to carry out the suggestions of our Central Committee for the defeat of a Bill which, if passed, will inflict a blow on the undertaker as great as the boon it will confer on the widow and orphan—whom we, of course, can only consider as customers. The Metropolitan Interments Bill goes to dock us of every penny that we make by taking advantage of the helplessness of afflicted families. And just calculate what our loss would then be; for, in the beautiful language of St. Demetrius, the silversmith, "Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth."