The funeral business has been around since they were wrapping mummies in long rags. For several hundred years people simply said a few words over the dead and then tossed dirt in their faces. Funerals were pretty much a dull ritual. The dead were buried the same day that they died, or at least, the following day as there was no cold storage back then and bodies tended to go bad quickly, especially in warmer climates.
The art of embalming came around during the Civil War, 1860 to 1865. This happened for two reasons. One, soldier's remains were sent long distances to their homes for the first time as families wanted to bury them near home. The other reason was that assassinated President Abraham Lincoln's body had to travel from Washington, DC to Springfield, Illinois and there were many stops along the way so the American people in different cities and small towns could view the man they had voted for but had never actually seen. The body had to be preserved long enough for the trip. But for the most part, funerals at that time were still conduced in the deceased's homes. There were no actual funeral homes then.
By the 1880s, funeral homes, or undertaking parlors were growing in popularity. Since furniture and cabinet makers also had the task of building coffins, the first funeral homes were in furniture stores. Coffins were, in fact, pieces of furniture that the dead would rest in.
Metal caskets had been around for about 50-years at that time. However they were expensive and bought mostly by the rich. But in the 1880s/1890s, metal caskets became more accessible to the mainstream population. But wood was still the main coffin material. That was to keep the price down. After all, in 1900, a nice funeral complete with a good wooden coffin, the services of an undertaker and his hearse could set a family back around $12 to $28. At the time, this was a small fortune. So many folks still held the funeral service at home with a cheap wood casket and no embalming or undertaker. They took the body to the cemetery on a wagon and buried it themselves. They also would carve a nice wooden grave marker and place it.
By 1910 everything had changed. Then it was required that the family use an undertaker and that the cemetery supplied grave diggers and that a shop-made stone or marker be used. Also embalming was suggested as it would preserve the remains in the ground much longer. In the 1930s they began using the outer burial vaults much more often as well. By the late 1930s, it was standard practice to hold a funeral much like we do today.
But, like everything else in today's world, some funerals have gotten strange, weird and in a few cases, downright stupid. Some mourners now have the funeral directors pose the dead in crazy positions. Sitting at a table with a beer, laying in bed in pajamas, standing in a corner dressed in their rap music garb and even sitting in the driver's seat of a car or sitting on a motorcycle. We even have computerized gravestones now that show a video of the diseased on a monitor and plays a short documentary. Where does the electric come from to operate these things? And who keeps paying the bill?
More and more citizens now are being cremated because funeral costs have skyrocketed out of control. A standard funeral can cost from $6,200 upwards to $30,000. They even have $100,000 gold plated caskets to put in the ground forever. I guess some people really do have more money then they do brains.
The business of death has become big business. And many people want the best of everything. Even the flowers will mortgage your home. But cremation will cost you a couple thousand and that beats selling your children so you can afford to bury Aunt Maude.
In most cases, I dedicate my blogs to someone. But I'll be darned if I can think of who...or what to dedicate this one to. So I'll just dedicate it to the history of funerals. Without them, once we die, we would simply lay around a field somewhere and rot.
Warning:
On this blog there are photographs of the dead. Most of these pictures are now over 100-years old. However, if these bother you, then you may want to forgo this blog. Viewer discretion is advised.