Modern Funeral Customs

[JamesWhitehead]

I like the sound of being useful. Finally

I've had a Futures bid for your Zinc. Hold in there a while and it might go up.

 

[escargot]

or maybe they leave it on for something to grab onto when you are filing the nails down?

I'm not sure that's the sort of service my chiropodist offers.

 

[Naughty_Felid]

I'm not sure that's the sort of service my chiropodist offers.

Have you asked?

 

[GerdaWordyer]

Gordon Jackson the actor (The Professionals) donated his body to science and a friend of my mum's who was studying to be a chiropodist got his leg to work with. It still had his genitals on it (!).
So much for Mr Hudson for being uptight, or even being tightly knit.
But donating sounds brilliant from what I know from a colleague who had a tradition of having most of his fam donated. You help students, but the schools eventually send you cremated reamains to store or sprinkle. Economical and useful.

 

[hunck]

Sorry, no more details, the anecdote speaks for itself really. It wasn't any secret that Jackson left his body to science, by the way, I have a memory of reading it in his obit at the time. I suppose it's just squeamishness that makes the idea of having your body parts, all of them, used for research. Mind you, we've all heard the horror stories about medical students' sense of humour.

That's disappointing frankly. You could've made something up.

"She snipped off some ginger pubes & kept them as a lucky mascot in a matchbox on a shelf in the kitchen for 30 years"

 

[Frideswide]

"She snipped off some ginger pubes & kept them as a lucky mascot in a matchbox on a shelf in the kitchen for 30 years"

has he been dead for that long?????

 

[GNC]

has he been dead for that long?????

No - and there really does lie a tale.

 

[Frideswide]

No - and there really does lie a tale.

 

[hunck]

No - and there really does lie a tale.

*Feels hook reeling him in*

So what is the tale?

 

[GNC]

Er, there isn't one, I was joking. Sometimes a severed leg is just a severed leg.

 

[David Plankton]

The Killers: Mr Brightside sing-a-long at County Kerry wake goes viral
Rock band The Killers have paid tribute after a pub sing-a-long at a wake in the Republic of Ireland went viral.
Footage of the mass rendition of The Killers' song Mr Brightside has chalked up hundreds of thousands of hits on social media.
The videos were filmed after the funeral of Ger 'Farmer' Foley on 24 March.

*Very lively video at link*

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35913126

 

[FrKadash]

8 of the World's Strangest Burial Spots
by Eric Grundhauser
July 28, 2015

Death could take you at any time, so it is always a good idea to have some instructions in place for how you would like to be buried. But why settle for a boring underground burial when you could have your body stored for its eternal rest in all sorts of interesting places? In fact, all over the world, people have been burying the dead in unexpected locales.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/article...utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=atlas-page

 

[David Plankton]

A hearse just about identical to this has just gone by outside. Had the same purple cross as well.

 

[Naughty_Felid]

View attachment 2349
A hearse just about identical to this has just gone by outside. Had the same purple cross as well.

Follow these three steps:

1)Check to see if you have a chimney.
2)Check to see if you've a chimney sweep of about 6 years old up the chimney.
3)Look outside to see if you can spot a bloke like this pratting around.

If you spot all these three you've gone back in time 120 years.

If you only spotted the grinning fool you've gone back in time to 1967 and you're watching the making of Half a Sixpence.

Not sure what this has to do with the hearse, but it probably wise to do it anyway.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Tommy Steele might be still alive. Hush, he might hear you.

 

[rynner2]

Lorry driver Kenny taken to final resting place on flatbed truck
By WBCaroline | Posted: May 21, 2016

Lorry driver Kenny taken to final resting place on flatbed truck

A retired lorry driver was given a fitting send-off when he was driven to his funeral on a flatbed truck.
Kenny David Roberts, 68, drove all over the UK and Europe, and was among the first in a fraternity of long-distance lorry drivers travelling to the Middle East, transporting non-ferrous metals.

His widow Annie, 66, said: "Lorry driving was his life. I would say he was of a dying breed of loaders. He was an expert roper and sheeter. He taught me how to rope a load."
Mrs Roberts from Canada, met the Manchester-born trucker in 1992, through friends in Loughborough, Leicestershire, during a trip to the UK. She emigrated and they married a year later.
"It was either that or I said he would have to become an ice road trucker," she said.

The couple moved to Point, near Truro, in 1997, and three years later Mr Roberts started a courier business.
"He would go all over the country delivering show plants to places such as Hampton Court and Chelsea Flower Show," she said. "He absolutely loved his plants, they gave him so much pleasure."

Mrs Roberts said her husband would have been thrilled to know he was transported to his funeral at Penmount Crematorium in the way he had travelled for most of his life.
She said the gesture, arranged by funeral directors DA Lovering in St Agnes, was very touching.
Sonia White, from DA Lovering, which used a Morris 1946 vintage flatbed truck to negotiate the narrow roads, said it was fitting for Mr Roberts to do his "last drop" from a lorry.
Mr Roberts' best driving mate, Mick Fletcher, flew from the Midlands for the intimate funeral.

"He was a very humble, self-effacing man," said Mrs Roberts.
"He had a dry sense of humour and was always very helpful and a very gentle chap. I think he would have absolutely loved his send-off.
"He would have smiled and said, 'well done Annie'."

DA Lovering has previously enlisted the help of a tractor, a pony and trap, a Volkswagen camper van and motorcycle hearse.

Mr Roberts died on April 8 at St Julia's Hospice, Hayle.

http://www.westbriton.co.uk/8203-Lorry-driver-trip-flatbed-truck/story-29297484-detail/story.html

 

[ramonmercado]

In a graveyard in Hungary, solemn contemplation gave way to frantic sportsmanship on Friday as dozens of grave diggers battled to prove they were the fastest and best in the business.

Taking their places at plots selected by pulling names out of a hard hat, 18 two-man teams waited for an official to shout "Start!" before shoveling at the ground to dig a precise, regulation-size grave as quickly as possible.

"I don't think this is morbid," the Hungarian Undertakers’ Association's deputy chairman, Zoltan Juracsik, told Reuters at the national grave-digging contest at the wooded cemetery in Debrecen, Hungary's biggest city after Budapest.

"This is a profession, and the colleagues who toil in competition today are proud and deserve our respect."

In less than half an hour, the local team, perhaps enjoying the home advantage, finished their grave first. The stragglers took almost one hour.

The graves were then judged on neatness and whether they complied with the regulation size: 200 cm long, 80 cm wide and 160 cm deep (7 feet by 2 feet 7 inches by 5 feet). The winning team wins a place in an international tournament against Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. ...

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-gravediggers-idUSKCN0YP1FL

Vid at link.

 

[Rerenny]

I have an absolute fear of being buried alive (a childhood spent reading Edgar Allan Poe has its consequences) and my lifelong solution has always been that once it is suspected that I have shuffled off this mortal coil that someone will chop off my head. Then both bits of me can be safely put into the coffin and lowered down.

My main passion in life is comedy and I'm always thrilled to recognise personal traits (bad tempered, melancholic, a bit too fond of alcohol) in the biographies of comedians so you can imagine how happy I was to discover that Grimaldi shared my fear of premature burial and had the same safety precaution in place.

No doubt one day soon I will have to have a somewhat morbidly embarrassing conversation with a solicitor and/or a funeral director to find out if my needs can be fulfilled, come the day.

 

[escargot]

View attachment 2349
A hearse just about identical to this has just gone by outside. Had the same purple cross as well.

There are specialist companies that rent these hearses out so it may well have been the same one.
As I may have mentioned, I live near the local town cemetery and sometimes see these horses and carriages being unloaded at the two nearby undertakers' premises.

Gives me a mixed feeling of, well, someone's getting a lovely send-off! along with how much their family must miss them.

 

[rynner2]

Britain's best embalmer: 'I can rattle through eight people a day'
He faced some stiff opposition at the Good Funerals awards, but Andy Holder beat rivals to win recognition for his skills. Meet the man who has worked on 30,000 corpses
Camilla Palmer
Sunday 25 September 2016 16.00 BST

Andy Holder loves his job. It’s just a shame that the people he works for – or rather, on – don’t appreciate him. It’s not because he’s not good at it. He is – he’s got an award to prove it. No, it’s because they’re dead.

Holder is an embalmer – an unsung hero in the funeral business who gets a body ready for burial or cremation, running through procedures that would make most feel a bit queasy. “Basically, I give them a blood transfusion using formaldehyde,” he clarifies chirpily from the mortuary.

Embalming a body after a postmortem is more complicated. “There’s unstitching, and I might have to find the arteries one by one if all the organs have been removed and then replaced,” he says, matter-of-factly. Then there are the cosmetic things. “Washing hair, setting features, shaving men and applying makeup to women, if their loved ones think it’s appropriate. I can rattle through eight people a day,” he laughs.

His personable nature, coupled with his technical expertise, have won Holder the accolade Best Embalmer at this year’s Good Funeral awards, the sector’s Oscars. The Good Funeral Guide, the not-for-profit organisation that set up the awards, offers advice on alternative services, burial grounds, coffin types. There’s even a DIY guide. “You need strong friends for that,” jokes Holder. “But I’ve embalmed plenty of people on their own beds. I’ve even done one on a kitchen table.”
Holder, 50, was a bricklayer before a friend who worked at the local crematorium suggested a career change. A spooky late-night visit to an undertaker who allowed Holder to watch him working – “two straight embalmings and a postmortem” – and his fate was sealed. “I knew I could do this job – it takes a certain type of person who can dispassionately cope, and not be shocked and feel strange – or ill.” He started training in 1998, the day after the third of his five children was born, and began work full-time in 2001. Now, almost 30,000 embalmings later and with his 20-year-old son Brandon training alongside him, he remains delighted with his career choice.

etc...

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...st-embalmer-goes-to-andy-holder-good-funerals

 

[Frideswide]

Why is embalming done? Is burying/burning skin bags of formaldehyde a good idea?

 

[David Plankton]

Why is embalming done?

From
http://www.manningfunerals.net.nz/why-is-embalming-done.html

There are three reasons: Hygiene – so that the Funeral Directors and others coming into contact with the deceased are protected; Preservation – so that the family have quality time to spend with their family member without the concerns of decomposition or odors and thirdly, Restoration –an embalmed body generally looks better.

Is burying/burning skin bags of formaldehyde a good idea?

No, I wouldn't have thought so.

 

[Xanatic*]

Can't they just store the body in a really large tupperware box?

 

[ramonmercado]

Can't they just store the body in a really large tupperware box?

An old tea chest would be more ecologically friendly.

 

[Xanatic*]

I meant untill burial, instead of formaldehyde. For that sealed-in freshness.

 

[Mythopoeika]

I meant untill burial, instead of formaldehyde. For that sealed-in freshness.

That would make 'open casket' funeral services a no-no.

 

[GNC]

Near the end of his life, Bela Lugosi was so drug addicted he had to drink formaldehyde to get through the day. Or possibly as an early preparation for the inevitable.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Near the end of his life, Bela Lugosi was so drug addicted he had to drink formaldehyde to get through the day. Or possibly as an early preparation for the inevitable.

Hmmm.

Formaldehyde is highly toxic to all animals, regardless of method of intake. Ingestion of 30 mL (1 oz.) of a solution containing 37% formaldehyde has been reported to cause death in an adult human. Water solution of formaldehyde is very corrosive and its ingestion can cause severe injury to the upper gastrointestinal tract.

Perhaps you meant Demerol?

 

[GNC]

Nope, I'm afraid not. It's a miracle he lasted as long as he did.

 

[Mythopoeika]

I can't find any formal confirmation of that anywhere.