Replevying a Corpse

As a hardened reader of sensationally horrible deaths in the Victorian press, you would think that very little would shock. Yet there is a category of mortuary stories that recently has given me pause. I refer, of course, to stories involving writs of replevin on corpses.

What?

Here is the basic legal definition.

Replevin is an action or a writ issued to recover an item of personal property wrongfully taken. Replevin, sometimes known as “claim and delivery”, is an antiquated legal remedy in which a court requires a defendant to return specific goods to the plaintiff at the beginning of the action. The advantage of a writ (order) of replevin is that it deprives the defendant of the use of the property while the case is awaiting trial, therefore increasing the likelihood of a quick settlement.

But what does this have to do with corpses?

REPLEVYING A CORPSE

A Dead Woman’s Body Held for a Board Bill.

Trouble Between Foster Geggs and Mrs. Frost, His Landlady.

A Difference of Fifty Dollars Provokes a Strange Suit.

Difficulties Experienced by a Constable in Serving a Writ.

‘Squire Sanderson issued a writ of replevin yesterday for the remains of the wife of Foster Geggs, a merchant of New Lexington, Ohio. They were detained by a Mrs. Frost, a keeper of a boarding-house at No. 322 Walnut street. Constable Frank Dossman served the papers, and, after a great deal of trouble, the body was secured.

Five weeks ago a gentleman and lady arrived in this city from New Lexington, Highland County, Ohio. They were Mr. and Mrs. Foster Geggs. They applied to Mrs. Frost for board and lodging, and were accommodated. The lady appeared to be in bad health, and

THEIR MISSION TO THIS CITY

was the search of medical aid for Mrs. Geggs, who was suffering from a complication of diseases. She appeared to regain her health for a time, but a week ago she had a relapse. Early yesterday morning her sufferings were released by death. When daylight had arrived Geggs sent for Estep & Meyer, the undertakers. They embalmed the body, and, incased in a handsome coffin, it was ready to be shipped to New Lexington for burial. Shortly after noon the undertakers’ wagon arrived to take the remains to the depot, but Mrs. Frost refused to allow them to be removed. She claimed that Geggs owed her $50 for board and lodging.

HE ACKNOWLEDGED THE INDEBTEDNESS,

but not to the amount she claimed. He offered to settle for $25. This offer the woman spurned. He pleaded with her to allow the undertakers to remove the body of his dead wife, but she shook her head and said no. She wanted her money, and was going to have it, if she had to hold the body for a week. Several of the boarders tried to persuade her to release the remains, but it was of no used. Finally, Geggs threatened to swear out a writ of replevin. Mrs. Frost laughed at the idea, and dared any Constable to enter her house. Seeing no other way to secure the body of his wife, he appeared before ‘Squire Sanderson and swore out

THE WRIT OF REPLEVIN.

The ‘Squire detailed Constable Dossman to serve the papers. When he arrived he found the door of the house locked and barred. He rang and knocked for admittance, but Mrs. Frost refused to admit him. He next tried the windows, but could not in any way gain an entrance. The alley way was the only resort, and on this side the Frost woman did not look for the Constable to enter. After scaling a high fence he found open the rear door. Having gained admittance, he found the corpse in the parlor. The writ was served on Mrs. Frost, and she reluctantly opened up the front door and

THE COFFIN WAS REMOVED

to the undertaker’s wagon, which was still in waiting. The remains were driven to the Grand Central Depot, from whence they were taken to New Lexington last night. The writ also called for several valise and trunks, which were also secured. The interesting and sensational suit will be heard Monday December 27, by “Squire Sanderson.

This is the second instance in this city where a corpse was secured only on a writ of replevin.

ANOTHER CASE

About two years ago the wife of Johnnie Ryan, the Fifth-street concert hall man, swore out a writ for the body of her baby that was buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery on the Warsaw pike. Mrs. Ryan wanted the remains removed to another cemetery, but the Superintendent refused to give up the body, claiming that she owned for the burial lot, and the digging of the grave. She appeared before “Squire Sanderson and swore out the writ. Constable Frank Johnson, with a squad of Special Constables, served the papers. A number of spades were secured and the body of the child was resurrected. The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 17 December 1886: p. 4

Popular thought held that a body was not property and could not be stolen.

The common law recognizes no property in anybody in the dead, though it does recognize the property in the shroud and other apparel of the dead as belonging to the person who was at the expense of the funeral. Cincinnati [OH] Daily Gazette 17 April 1880: p. 8

and

But whatever may have been the rule in England under the Ecclesiastical law, and while it may be true still that a dead body is not property in a commercial sense of that term, yet in this country it is, so far as we know, universally held that those who are entitled to the possession and custody of it for purposes of decent burial have certain legal rights to and in it which the law will protect. Indeed the mere fact that a person has exclusive rights over a body for the purposes of burial, necessarily leads to the conclusion that it is property in the broadest sense of the term, viz., something over which the law accords him exclusive control. (Larsen v. Chase, 50 N. W. 238, cited in “Property in Dead Bodies,” Walter F. Kuzenski, Marquette Law Review, Issue 1, Vol. 9, December 1924)

However, in  real life, bodies were often held for ransom. The threat of either retaining a corpse, of publicly displaying it, or of burying it in a pauper’s grave was used in all kinds of circumstances to extort money, legally owed or not. A decent burial was a serious business; even the poorest would go to great lengths to have the trappings of a “proper” funeral, rather than a pauper’s rites, with burial in the Potter’s Field.

Some hospitals apparently had VIP undertakers on the early 20th-century equivalent of speed-dial. I assume the undertakers paid handsomely for their priority status.

 ON REPLEVIN WRIT

John Lund Secures Possession of Wife’s Corpse.

Undertaker Holds Body of Woman Who Died at Hospital and Refuses Possession.

After he had been forced to take out a writ of replevin to secure the corpse of his wife, who died yesterday morning at U.B.A. hospital, John Lund, an Englishman, was permitted to proceed with the arrangements for the funeral. Mrs. Lund died yesterday morning and, in accordance with a custom common in the hospitals, a nurse immediately notified Edward J. Corkery, an undertaker at 524 South Division Street. Corkery called for the body.

Soon afterward Metcalf & Co., who had been notified by the husband, went for the body and were referred to Corkery, who refused to give it up unless paid for his trouble. Lund went to the prosecutor for a warrant for kidnaping, but the prosecutor advised him to take out the replevin papers, and made them out himself. The body was taken by a constable late last night on the writ and removed to Metcalf’s establishment.

The funeral will be held from the residence of Andrew Olesen, 264 Ann street, Saturday afternoon at 2:30. Grand Rapids [MI] Press 5 September 1907: p. 8

It is a nice point whether a dead person can be kidnapped, but the prosecutor obviously made the right call.

With this next case, we meet Mr. John B. Habig, a well-known Cincinnati character and keeper of the Cincinnati public morgue for 20 years, in a highly discreditable incident.

AN EXTRAORDINARY REPLEVIN

An Attempted Case of Extortion

The body of the aged gentleman who fell dead in front of No. 88 Twelfth street, on Thursday morning, as reported in the Gazette of yesterday, was identified yesterday by his son as that of William Hall, as was surmised. The young man, William C. Hall, an engineer on the I.C. & L Railroad, came to the city yesterday and after identifying the body at Mr. John B. Habig’s undertaking establishment, No. 183 West Sixth street, ordered it removed to Soards, a few doors east for shipment and interment, at the same time offering Habig $10, as payment for keeping the corpse. But Habig was not that kind of man; he wanted more than $10 for keeping the body a day and a half, and demanded $40. The young man refused, claiming that the demand was extortionate, and was told that he must pay it, or he could not have the corpse. This was late last night, but Mr. Hall posted off to ‘Squire True, who, fortunately, was in his office trying the case of the Hamiltonian horse-killers, and who at once gave Mr. Hall the requisite magisterial assistance. Constable Green was armed with a writ of replevin and at once started off after the body. Shortly before midnight the strong arm of the law grasped the corpse and transferred it to Soards’ establishment, from whence it will be shipped to Mt. Carmel to-morrow morning. If Mr. Habig wishes to rid himself of the richly deserved odium which much attach to the act, he must rise and give a satisfactory explanation of his exorbitant demand.

In years gone by the deceased kept a well-known livery stable on Sycamore street below Fourth. Cincinnati [OH] Daily Gazette 8 August 1874: p. 4

The Cincinnati Enquirer also reported on the case, adding the detail that “The daughter of the deceased remarked that she did not wish Habig to bury the body because he had sent a drunken attendant with her when she went to view it.” The newspaper added, “Mr. Habig has added to his reputation, but not to his stock of money, or we have been sadly misinformed.” Yet when he died, the Enquirer wrote favorably of him, stating in his obituary: “On down the pages of crime’s annals in this vicinity the name of Habig is so closely linked with these crimes and tragedies that it is a question if there lived in Cincinnati during that period a man whose name was more familiar to the public eye.” [Cincinnati (OH) Enquirer, 4 May 1898: p. 8] He was described as a big, fat, jolly man, always ready for fun. De mortuis, one assumes. Plus he left three sons to carry on the undertaking business, who would be more inclined to advertise if the Enquirer didn’t rake up the past.

Freight and railway companies often found shipping the dead a very profitable line.

Replevying a Corpse

A poor widow had the dead body of her husband brought by rail from Dover to Leamington, without first inquiring the cost. The railway company charged at the rate of 1s a mile, making £8, and as the widow could not pay this sum they detained the corpse for two days until the money was raised. Evening Post, 14 May 1892: p. 1

HOLDING CORPSE FOR THE EXPRESS

The agent of the Adams Express Co. at Shamokin held the corpse of Henry Fretz, awaiting the payment of charges amounting to over a hundred dollars. It was finally settled by the government.

Fretz was from Pitman, Northumberland county, and an apprentice in the United States Navy. February 14 he was drowned in the San Francisco Bay and government officials notified his parents that they would bury the body there or bear the expense of having it shipped home.

The parents requested the body to be shipped and it arrived in Shamokin Wednesday evening, accompanied by a bill for charges amounting to over a hundred dollars. Being unable to pay the claim, the agent refused to turn the corpse over to the grief-stricken parents and it was held in the Shamokin office, where it remained until the tangle was straightened out by the government assuming the charges. Wilkes-Barre [PA] Times 27 February 1909: p. 9

Sometimes the writ was for a partial corpse.

Recently a man had his leg amputated in a Washington hospital, and, upon visiting the capital some months afterwards, discovered the member preserved in alcohol. He was shocked, and demanded it, that he might bury it. The demand was refused, but, upon bringing suit in replevin, the case was decided in his favour, and he was given possession of his own leg. The Arizona Sentinel [Yuma, AZ] 28 February 1885: p. 2

Here we find dueling replevins: for corpse and for shroud.

POLICE WILL GUARD FUNERAL SERVICES

Undertaker Threatens to Take the Clothes Off of a Corpse During Row With a Rival, So Precaution Is Taken

Funeral services for Charles Klytta, 60 years old, will be held under police protection this afternoon from his late residence, 5438 South Laflin street, because B. Trundell, an undertaker at 1702 West Forty-Eight street, threatens to interrupt the ceremonies with a writ of replevin and remove from the body a suit of clothes which he says he paid for.

This threat grows out of a dispute between two undertakers soon after Klytta fell heir to $1,000 several weeks ago. Klytta was employed by Trundell, but he was a close friend of Joseph Patka, 1750 West Forty-Eighth street, a business rival of Trundell’s.

When Klytta received the $1,000 he left his wife and eight children and went to live with Nicholas Jasnoch, 4858 Winchester avenue. Then he began to spend his small fortune in having a good time. He became ill and was told he had not long to live.

Immediately both undertakers asked Klytta if he couldn’t throw the “business” their way. Klytta was in a dilemma. He liked Patka as a friend, but also thought he should respect the wishes of his former employer. Finally a Bohemian lodge of which he was a member was asked to settle the question. A committee waited on Klytta’s death bed and argued the matter, with the result that Patka was chosen.

Scarcely had Klytta breathed his last, however, when Trundell drove up and carried off the body. Mrs. Klytta pleaded in vain for the return of the body. Then she engaged Attorney D. Carmichael, and he tried to get the body. Yesterday the lawyer obtained a writ of replevin from the Municipal court and, accompanied by a bailiff and a policeman, went to Trundell’s establishment. The body was laid out in state in the parlor, clad in a new suit of clothes.

The writ did not provide for taking the clothing with the body and an argument ensued. Finally Patka took the body and new suit and carried them off to his undertaking shop. Therefore Trundell threatens to obtain a writ of replevin for the clothing and to get it today when the services are held at the Klytta residence. The Inter Ocean [Chicago, IL] 8 November 1912: p. 1

Undertakers more usually replevined their own property, such as coffins or candle-holders.

Bill Is Not Paid:

Takes Coffin Back

Detroit, Oct. 9 Because his bill for $300 had not been paid, Stanley Lappo, an undertaker, flanked by two constables, entered the home of Mrs. Vincent Dziegiuski. After retrieving the woman’s body from its casket, he loaded the latter, with candles, pedestals and display palms, into his wagon and drove off. The undertaker later explained the woman’s husband had agreed to pay the account before the funeral took place. When he failed to do so, Lappo obtained a writ of replevin and took possession of his property.

The husband later effected an arrangement with another undertaker, and the funeral was held a few hours later. Duluth [MN] News-Tribune 10 October 1921: p. 6

Sometimes the quarrels leading to a writ were not about money, but about something more visceral. This is an excerpt from the story of Mrs. Terrica Beck, an elderly Catholic woman badly treated by her daughter and son-in-law. I have not found a resolution to the case.

Throughout her last illness she desired to be buried in the Catholic cemetery. This was her last request. She died in her sister’s house. The expenses of her last sickness were borne by her sister. The coffin and shroud were purchased, and the last sad offices performed by her sister.

Scarcely had her last breath expired, when her son-in-law, before careless of her welfare, appeared and laid claim to her clothing and body. More desirous of the property, he departed expressing his willingness that Mrs. Beck’s dying wishes as to her interment should be complied with….In accordance with the wishes of the deceased, her body was placed in the vault of the Catholic cemetery, whence it was removed by a suit of replevin sued out by her son-in-law. He had obtained a coffin and shroud from the city, and had a grave dug at the expense of the city in the Potter’s Field. He was willing to pay the expense of a law suit, to defeat the dying wish of his wife’s mother, but not to pay for giving her more than a pauper’s funeral. Plain Dealer [Cleveland, OH] 28 April 1870: p. 3

One can only imagine the family dynamic that would lead to the following situation:

Refused to give up Body

Anderson, Ind., Jan. 4

Mrs. Joseph Speece was compelled to replevin the body of her husband so that it could be buried. He died Wednesday at the home of his wife’s father, John Nelson, and when she prepared for the funeral Nelson refused to give up the body until a large board bill had been paid. When a writ was served the body was delivered. The widow also sues Nelson for $100 for the detention of the body. Wilkes-Barre [PA] Times 4 January 1901: p. 1

One last oddity: Although judges in several jurisdictions ruled in the early 1900s that corpses had no commercial value (were not property) and thus could not be replevined, that judgement did not stand all over the country. In a 1906 case where there was a wrangle about the funeral expenses exceeding what the family wanted to pay, the family obtained a writ of replevin to get the body back from the overcharging undertaker. “As some value had to be given the writ it read ‘one corpse to the value of $50.’” The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 30 September 1906: p. 12

There are many dismal stories of first/second wives, mistresses, and hostile family members battling over loved one’s corpses, but they don’t always go as far as replevining. Other stories of legal proceedings over corpses? Swear out a writ to Chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com

Thanks to Michael Robinson for the details of corpse property law.

Undine, of Strange Company, sent this great story of a legal fight over an embalmed body.

She also added a bonus tale of a dead-beat dad: A (somewhat) related story was about a man whose wife died, and he afterwards stiffed the undertaker on the bill.  (“Stiffed,” get it? Oh, never mind)  When, a while later, his daughter also passed away, this undertaker refused to take the job.  In fact, he spread the word through the “Undertaker’s Association” that the man was a, well, deadbeat, so all his colleagues refused the man’s business as well.  (As a side note, the bereaved man tried to get a free coffin from a local charity.  When they realized he wasn’t indigent–just an incredible skinflint–they indignantly refused.)  I don’t recall exactly how the story ended, except that he finally managed to get his daughter buried using a blanket instead of a coffin!

Thanks, Undine!

For more stories of Victorian death and mourning see my book, The Victorian Book of the Dead, also available for Kindle. Or ask your library/bookstore to order it. You’ll find more details about the book here and indexes here.

Chris Woodyard is the author of A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death, The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com.

Corsets and Beer Wagons: Floral Vulgarities: 1891, 1904

Two ladies and funeral flower arrangements including a harp, a horseshoe and a stuffed dove.

FLORAL VULGARITY

Is It Not High Time to Call a Halt?

Beer Wagons and Corsets in Flowers

The Height of Horror Reached in “The Market Woman of Hamburg.”

Is it not time to cry a halt? Has not the attempted gilding of fine gold and painting the lily been carried far beyond the point of wasteful and ridiculous excess? These questions, surely, must strike any unprejudiced mind, any simple, natural, healthy, unperverted taste, in contemplation of the extreme lengths to which floral vulgarity and shoddyism have run. The writer verily believed that the end of the scale had been reached with such sacrilegious crudities as the “Gates Ajar,” but what can be thought of a “funeral piece” consisting of a beer wagon, laden with barrels and drawn by horses, all made of roses and smilax, with straw for the horses’ tails?

Going back a little, is not a flower a flower? What more can be made of it? In poetry and in popular language alike the idea of a flower implies the thought of the crown of perfection. Why, the very name, “corolla,” the botanical term for blossom, means a crown. Is it artistic, to say the least, to torture what is already perfect of its kind into a shape altogether foreign to its character and which it was never intended to take? There are still in our midst innumerable sweet, old-fashioned, childlike souls, who fondly believe that the Lord made flowers just the way he wanted them. These do not hesitate to say that his works ought to be handled with something akin to reverence.

It is a beautiful custom—one most certainly founded upon the purest and holiest instincts of human nature, one to which even the most degraded of our species must surely respond—to deck our dead and adorn their last resting-place with flowers. But why seek to do what the old rhetoricians called “improving the sublime?” The result is caricature, if nothing worse. Imagine the steps leading to the “Gates Ajar” (what mortal has any adequate conception of the gates of Paradise?) lettered in purple chenille! Think of a silent harp with the back made of tin-foil, or a sickle whose edge will not cut, or a pillow upon which no tired head could rest, or a broken column with the break smoothly “plastered”! Still worse are funeral wreaths made of dyed immortelles and aniline-colored grasses, or of stiff, monstrous china roses, or death-lie waxen ones mingled with tawdry, tinseled leaves.

If slaughtering birds for millinery purposes is sufficiently reprehensible to attract the notice of “Audubon Societies” and “Bird Defenders,” what must be thought of our present custom of mixing the bodies of white doves among our floral atrocities? Are we much better than the old barbarians who sacrificed animals at the death of their relatives or of persons of distinction? What has become of the beautiful, heart-cherished superstition, if you choose to call it so, that it is a sin to hurt a dove because it is an emblem of the Holy Ghost? Even if the sense of the fitness of things in many minds were not outraged by such use of a lovely bird, common sense should teach any one that killing an inoffensive creature will not make the departed dear one any happier in the other world.

Talk to an intelligent florist and you will find that he agrees with you. “Floral emblems are in bad taste, I know,” he admits. “Flowers cannot be made to look well in anything but the simplest designs, like a cross, a wreath or a basket. But what can we do? People want broken wheels and things like that; we must supply the demand for them or we’d starve. The worst of it is some people know that floral designs are generally signs of vulgar ostentation, but they feel that they cannot help themselves. They send a floral piece to a friend’s funeral because they’re afraid they’ll be thought mean if they don’t. Their hearts would prompt them to send simple clusters of cut flowers, but they fear that they’ll be misunderstood. To my mind the floral pieces are more funereal, more suggestive of death than death itself.

“Some people order floral pieces because they feel that they are getting a bigger show for their money. In a piece, poor flowers can be worked up to look better than they are. Cut flowers must be good specimens or their case is hopeless. There is no way of disguising their imperfections.

“I heard about the beer-wagon. It was sent to the funeral of a brewer. It had to be made, because the brewer’s employes wanted it. One might think that, in the presence of death, the brewer’s friends would want to forget that he had ever had anything to do with beer. If talking shop is commonly regarded as vulgar, what must be thought of the intrusion of the man’s business at his funeral?”

But monstrosity in floral design does not stop at funeral atrocities. It is reaching hideous lengths in grotesque festival and house decorations. At a recent “opening” of instrument of torture intended to distort the God-created, natural, womanly figure—a practice one step further in downward advance than the distortion of flowers, even if far more common-there was displayed a floral corset, upon a wire frame, etc., like the usual “emblem.” In place of the head for the model was a wreath of roses, ferns and smilax, with a dove looking out from the circle, for no earthly meaning or reason than what in the domain of language would be called bombast.”

But the climax was certainly reached at the last floral exhibit held in this city. The “Market Woman of Hamburg” was a conflagration, a nightmare of flaming horror. The outrageous caricature of the human form was sufficiently terrible—but the colors were simply indescribable. The hat was wreathed with gaudy yellows in either coreopsis or marigold, perhaps both. The skirt was one glare of scarlet geranium and pink bougainvillea. The face, arms and hands were in pink and white tinted hydrangeas. Horror of horrors, the eyes were black shoe buttons.

The monster carried real baskets filled with cucumbers and parsley, suspended from a stick yoke and it stood upon a square yard of red and yellow corollas, which told nothing but a pitiful story of how many poor plants had been ruthlessly robbed. We are not popularly supposed to be a nation of idolaters, but it is very certain that no heathen ever permitted a more abominable image to stand a day.

Although the florist quoted in the foregoing threw the blame of the perpetration of floral funeral monstrosities upon the people who ordered them to be made, it is not just possible that the florists themselves are more largely to blame in this matter than they would have it appear? But a judicious admixture of advice with their queries for instructions they might, did they choose, bring about a change that would be most wholesome. Of course they get much better prices for such horrors as have been referred to than they would for simple clusters of cut flowers, and they also have their hands filled with flowers that must be worked off somehow, and which are not salable, except when “made up” in set pieces. They might not be able at all times to control the demand for monstrosities, but they could discourage their perpetration, instead of aiding and abetting them as at present. At all events, it is certainly time to cry a halt, and no one can so well or so powerfully take the first step as the florists themselves.

San Francisco [CA] Chronicle 22 November 1891: p. 10

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Extravagance in mortuary floral arrangements was widely deplored in the press, but to little avail. For many years accounts of funerals still listed the arrangements and their donors. Some wealthy personages gave instructions for “N.F.” or “No Flowers” funerals, leaving the florists fearful for their businesses. But they need not have worried. It seems to be human nature to give flowers for the momentous occasions of life, even if those offerings are in dubious taste. For example:

On the occasion of the funeral of Judge Bross, of Cairo, Ill., the Eggeling Floral Company filled and shipped, on short notice, an order valued at $1,600, one of the largest orders ever sent out of St. Louis by a single firm. Nearly half an express car was needed to hold the pieces, many being of immense size. Among others was a beautiful “gates ajar.” 6×8 feet, made up almost entirely of Timothy Eaton chrysanthemums and Chatenay roses, and a column four feet high of white carnations and Bridesmaid roses, with a base made up of Sunrise roses. American Beauty roses and Asparagus Sprengeri were made into a large panel. American Florist, Vol. 21, 1904

The following designs show two early-20th century funeral designs. The first was a tribute from a bowling team and comes from The American Florist 8 August 1903. The second was a reminder: never send to know for whom the clock ticks; it ticks for thee. It is from Floral Designs: A guide in choosing and ordering flowers, 1902.

Mrs Daffodil has previously written on funeral flowers here and there is a section on the subject in The Victorian Book of the Dead, available at various online book-shops.

In a similar, personalised vein–Mrs Daffodil is uncertain as to whether her readers will find it vulgar, the colours are certainly quite lovely–a memorial wreath for a wheelman. From Elemental Cremation and Burial.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

Chris Woodyard is the author of A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death, The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com.

A Motto at a Funeral: 1894

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/ladies-bon-voyage-travel-bag/6wE61nfQ7sIPRw

A Motto at a Funeral.

There are women who, if offered the choice between a matinee and a funeral will poll a tremendous vote in favor of the funeral. The dramatic opportunity is only a negative pleasure–the trappings of woe are a positive sensation.
There is a story told that a good though eccentric dame long since gathered to her accounting, in whom this passion was abnormally developed, arrived in town from her country place one day on a shopping expedition. This lady heard of the death of a mere acquaintance and learned that if she hurried to the house, she would be just in time for the funeral services. Shopping, as compared with mourning, had no charms, and the lady hastened to the house of sorrow. Now the constant traveling companion of this good woman was a brown linen atrocity in the nature of a handbag or roll. Upon this bag, embroidered in large letters by the misguided person from whom it was a gift, was a motto. Arrived at the house, our friend insisted upon having a seat as near the casket as was possible, and that achieved she placed the brown linen structure across her lap, then settled herself with a sigh of satisfaction. The letters upon the bag, held within a few feet of the deceased lady and visible to all the mourners, spelled the words, “Bon voyage.” –New York Recorder.

The Hawaiian Gazette [Honolulu, Hawaii] 3 July 1894: p. 5

Chris Woodyard is the author of A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death, The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead. And visit her newest blog, The Victorian Book of the Dead.

Celebration of Bad Mortuary Poetry: 1879, 1919

It’s “Bad Poetry Day,” a time to celebrate the very best of bad doggerel. I have to admit that I find a guilty pleasure in really bad poetry, particularly on mortuary subjects. Here are a few favorites.

THE UNION FOREVER

It seems that people differ

On the subject, very grave,

Of how to tend their bodies

When they’ve flunked their last close shave.

But as far as I’m affected

When I go to meet my Maker,

I’ll be happy and contented

With a union undertaker.

Some people speak of burning

So they’ll beat the Devil to it—

While others hold that later

They may need themselves and rue it;

But as far as I’m affected

When I go to meet my Maker,

I’ll be happy and contented

With a union undertaker.

Some people want a Parson,

While some others want a Priest.

Some players want no gallery,

While others want a feast—

But as far as I’m affected

When I go to meet my Maker,

I’ll be happy and contented

With a union undertaker.

I want a union label

On the lapel of my shroud;

I want the coffin union-made,

And no scabs in the crowd.

I want my union card to show

Saint Peter’s ticket taker 

That I was sent to Glory

By a union undertaker.

St. Louis [MO] Post-Dispatch 12 April 1919: p. 10

This one just rollicks along when read aloud:

THE UNIQUE HOTEL.

(See Murray’s  Scotland,” page 169).

My friends and my relatives know very well

I yearn for the novel and striking—
Just now there’s the strangest north-country hotel

Evoking my rapturous liking.
The notice (in language sufficiently terse)

Recording its varied resources,
Concludes with, “good stables. Superior hearse,

With suitable feathers and horses!”

The wines may be bad and civility nil,

The furniture aged and fluffy,
Wax candles appear twice-a-day in the bill,

And all may be gloomy and stuffy.
Such minor discomforts let cavillers curse;—

Eclipsing the painfullest courses,
You’ve but to recall that “superior hearse,

With suitable feathers and horses.”

Suppose, as by rail you’re approaching the spot,

Your train will persist in colliding

Along with another and “getting it hot,”

Or smashing to bits in a siding;
Though sadly your friends may regard your reverse,

While shedding the tear it enforces,
At least they can get a “superior hearse,

With suitable feathers and horses.”

Suppose you are spending a holiday there

With hopes of lost vigour regaining
By climbing up mountains and breathing the air,

And find it incessantly raining;
As daily the weather grows dismally worse,

And hope from your bosom divorces,
You’ll guess why they keep a “superior hearse,

With suitable feathers and horses.”

Suppose, when they give you your “little account,”

You go and you think you’ve detected

A glaring extortion, because the amount

Exceeds what you might have expected.

You’ll find it — suppose you decline to disburse,

And your fist your decision endorses—

Convenient to have that “superior hearse

With suitable feathers and horses.”

Fun, T. Moffitt 20 August 1879: p 74

See also “The Mourner A-La-Mode” over at Mrs Daffodil Digresses.

Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead and on Twitter @hauntedohiobook. And visit her newest blog The Victorian Book of the Dead.

The Pleasures of the Grave: 1886

THE PLEASURES OF THE GRAVE.

Some revelations have been made at a recent meeting of the Macclesfield Board of Guardians respecting the lavish expenditure indulged in by poor people on the occasion of their friends’ funerals. It would appear that for a period of about two years the local board of Guardians had been administering relief to an old married couple named John and Elizabeth McManus to the extent of 4s per week. On July 26^th the husband died, upon which the widow made preparations for a costly funeral, having in view the sum of £15 which she was  to receive as insurance money consequent upon his death. The smartest hearse and mourning coaches were ordered, the coffin was of the most solid character, and the relatives were all supplied with new mourning attire. In addition to this quantities of beer, wine and spirits were bought. On the very day of McManus’ burial the widow died, having previously ordered that similar preparations for her burial should be made as in the case of her husband. Charlotte McManus, a daughter-in-law, who is likewise a recipient of parish relief to the amount of 5s per week, after John McManus had been interred in the cemetery, set to work to bury her mother-in-law “decently.” She drew the whole £30, and Mr Heathcote, one of the Board’s relieving officers, said she spent £22 of it on the funeral, leaving only a balance of £7 odd. 

The Board of Guardians were highly indignant at this gross extravagance on the part of persons who had been receiving parish relief, and ordered Charlotte M’Manus to produce vouchers of the expenditure. These included, among a hundred other items:—Butter and cream, 2s 9l; two weeks’ charing, 10s; plain, spice, and currant bread, 4s 11d; three dresses, 17s 6d; jacket, 3s 6d; trimmings, 6s 3d; 1lb tea, 2s 4d; bottles of pickles, 1s 6d; 4 lbs lump sugar, 10d; ¼ lb best tobacco, Is; 7lb cheese, 4s 8d; crape, 9s 8d. All this and more was for Mrs M’Manus’ funeral. For John M’Manus there was a spice loaf, Is 6d; two currant loaves, 2s;  2 ½ lb butter 1s 9d; three pairs stockings, 3s 6d; three pairs gloves, 3s 5d; collars, 3d; tie, 6 1/2d; ½-pint sherry, 1s.  July 27th—Liquor, 4s; August 3rd—Liquor, 4s; August 4th—Liquor, 8s; August 5th —Four gallons ale, 6s 8d; cashmere, 12 s; lining, 4s; crape, 5s 4d; jacket, £1 1s; cashmere, 15s 5d; tobacco and pipes, 2s; two pairs women’s kid shoes, 9s 10d; one pair lace shoes, 8s 11d; one pair slippers, 2 6d; boy’s tweed suit, 10s 9d; boy’s black suit, 19s 9d; boy’s hat, 1s 9d. For Mrs McManus, best polished oak coffin, lined with flannel and wadding bed, shroud, and furnishing funeral £2 10s 1d; best hearse and Clarence, £1 15s; driver’s money, 1s 6d; cemetery expenses, 12s 6d; fittings for hearse and coffin; total, £4 19s. The sum of £4 19s was also spent in providing a coffin and hearse for McManus. Refreshments were not forgotten. In the case of John McManus’s funeral, liquor was set down at 23s 8d; bread and butter, 6s 3d; bread and cheese, 5s 3d; and another dubious item, which is vaguely treated under the head of “nourishment,” 5s.

Daily Telegraph.

The Press Supplement [Christchurch NZ] 23 October 1886: p. 1  

Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead. And visit her newest blog The Victorian Book of the Dead.

A ‘appy Release

On the Stairs 

The house had been “genteel.” When trade was prospering in the East End, and the ship-fitter or block-maker thought it a shame to live in the parish where his workshop lay, such a master had lived here. Now, it was a tall, solid, well-bricked, ugly house, grimy and paintless in the journey, cracked and patched in the windows; where the front door stood open all day long, and the womankind sat on the steps, talking of sickness and deaths and the cost of things; and treacherous holes lurked in the carpet of road-soil on the stairs and in the passage. For when eight families live in a house, nobody buys a door-mat, and the secret was one of those streets that are always muddy. It smelled, too, of many things, none of them pleasant (one was fried fish); but for all that it was not a slum.

Three flights up, a gaunt woman with bare forearms stayed on her way to listen at a door which, opened, let out a warm, fetid waft from a close sick-room. A bent and tottering old woman stood on the threshold, holding the door behind her.

“An’ is ‘e no better now, Mrs. Curtis?” the gaunt woman asked, with a nod at the opening.

The old woman shook her head, and pulled the door closer. Her jaw waggled loosely in her withered chaps: “Nor won’t be, till ‘e’s gone.” Then after a certain pause: “’E’s goin’,” she said.

“Don’t doctor give no ‘ope?”

“Lor’ bless ye, I don’t want to ast no doctors,” Mrs. Curtis replied, with something not unlike a chuckle. “I’ve seed too many on ’em. The boy’s a-goin’ fast; I can see that. An’ then”–she gave the handle another tug, and whispered–“he’s been called.” She nodded amain.

“Three seprit knocks at the bed-head las-night; an’ I know what that means!”

The gaunt woman raised her brows, and nodded. “Ah, well,” she said, “we all on us comes to it some day, sooner or later. An’ it’s often a ‘appy release.”

The two looked into space beyond each other, the elder with a nod and a croak. Presently the other pursued: “’E’s been a very good son, ain’t he?”

“Ay, ay—well enough son to me,” responded the old woman, a little peevishly; “an’ I’ll ‘ave ‘im put away decent, though there’s on’y the Union for me after. I can do that, thank Gawd” she added, meditatively, as, chin on fist, she stared into the thickening dark over the stairs.

“When I lost my pore ‘usband,” said the gaunt woman, with a certain brightening, “I give ‘im a ‘andsome funeral. ‘E was a Odd Feller, an’ I got twelve pound. I ‘ad a oak caufin an’ a open ‘earse. There was kerridge for the fam’ly an’ one for ‘is mates—two ‘orses each, an’ feathers, an’ mutes: an’ it went the furthest way round to the cimitry. ‘Wotever ‘appens, Mrs. Manders,’ says the undertaker, ‘you’ll feel as you’re treated ‘im proper; nobody can’t reproach you over that.’ An’ they couldn’t. ‘E was a good ‘usband to me, an’ I buried ‘im respectable.”

The gaunt woman exulted. The old, old story of Mander’s funeral fell upon the other one’s ears with a freshened interest, and she mumbled her gums ruminantly. “Bob’ll ‘ave a ‘ansome buryin’ too,” she said. “I can make it up, with the insurance money, an’ this, an’ that. On’y I dunno about mutes. It’s a expense.”

In the East End, when a woman has not enough money to buy a thing much desired, she does not say so in plain words; she says the thing is an “expense,” or a “great expense.” It means the same thing, but it sounds better. Mrs. Curtis had reckoned her resources, and found that mutes would be an “expense.” At a cheap funeral mutes cost half a sovereign and their liquor. Mrs. Manders said as much.

“Yus, yus, ‘arf a sovereign,” the old woman assented. Within, the sick man feebly beat the floor with a stick. “I’m a-comin’,” she cried, shrilly; “yus, ‘arf a sovereign, but it’s a lot, an’ I don’t see ‘ow I’m to do it–not at present.” She reached for the door-handle again, but stopped and added, by after-thought: “Unless I don’t ’ave no plooms.”

“It ‘ud be a pity not to ‘ave plooms. I ‘ad–“

There were footsteps on the stairs; then a stumble and a testy word. Mrs. Curtis peered over into the gathering dark. “Is it the doctor, sir?” she asked. It was the doctor’s assistant; and Mrs. Manders tramped up to the next landing as the door of the sick-room took him in.

For five minutes the stairs were darker than ever. Then the assistant, a very young man, came out again, followed by the old woman with a candle. Mrs. Manders listened in the upper dark. “He’s sinking fast,” said the assistant. “He must have a stimulant. Doctor Mansell ordered port wine. Where is it?” Mrs. Curtis mumbled dolorously. “I tell you he must have it,” he averred with unprofessional emphasis (his qualification was only a month old). “The man can’t take solid food, and his strength must be kept up somehow. Another day may make all the difference. It is because you can’t afford it?”

“It’s a expense–sich a expense, doctor,” the old woman pleaded. “An’ wot with ‘arf-pints o’ milk an’–” She grew inarticulate, and mumbled dismally.

“But he must have it, Mrs. Curtis, if it’s your last shilling; it’s the only way. If you mean you absolutely haven’t the money–” And he paused a little awkwardly. He was not a wealthy young man–wealthy young men do not devil for East End doctors—but he was conscious of a certain haul of sixpences at nap the night before; and, being inexperienced, he did not foresee the career of persecution whereon he was entering at his own expense and of his own motion. He produced five shillings: “If you absolutely haven’t the money, why–take this and get a bottle–good. Not at a public-house. But mind, at once. He should have had it before.”

It would have interested him, as a matter of coincidence, to know that his principal had been guilty of the self-same indiscretion–even the amount was identical—on that landing the day before. But, as Mrs. Curtis said nothing of this, he floundered down the stair and out into the wetter mud, pondering whether or not the beloved son of a Congregational minister might take full credit for a deed of charity on the proceeds of sixpenny nap. But Mrs. Curtis puffed her wrinkles, and shook her head sagaciously as she carried in her candle. From the room came a clink as of money falling into a teapot. And Mrs. Manders went about her business.

The door was shut, and the stair a pit of blackness. Twice a lodger passed down, and up and down, and still it did not open. Men and women walked on the lower flights, and out at the door, and in again. From the street a shout or a snatch of laughter floated up the pit. On the pavement footsteps rang crisper and fewer, and from the bottom passage there were sounds of stagger and sprawl. A demented old clock buzzed divers hours at random, and was rebuked every twenty minutes by the regular tread of a policeman on his beat. Finally, somebody shut the street-door with a great bang, and the street was muffled. A key turned inside the door on the landing, but that was all. A feeble light shone for hours along the crack below, and then went out. The crazy old clock went buzzing on, but nothing left that room all night. Nothing that opened the door….

When next the key turned, it was to Mrs. Manders’s knock, in the full morning; and soon the two women came out on the landing together, Mrs. Curtis with a shapeless clump of bonnet. “Ah, ‘e’s a lovely corpse,” said Mrs. Manders. “Like wax. So was my ‘usband.”

“I must be stirrin’,” croaked the old woman, “an’ go about the insurance and the measurin’ an’ that. There’s lot to do.”

“Ah, there is. ‘Oo are you goin’ to ‘ave–Wilkins? I ‘ad Wilkins. Better than Kedge, I think; Kedge’s mutes dresses rusty, an’ their trousis is frayed. If you was thinkin’ of ‘avin’ mutes–“

“Yus, yus”—with a palsied nodding–“I’m a-goin’ to ‘ave mutes; I can do it respectable, thank Gawd!”

“And the plooms?”

“Ay, yus, and the plooms too. They ain’t sich a great expense, after all.”

Tales of Mean Streets, Arthur Morrison, 1921: pp. 154-162

Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead. And visit her newest blog The Victorian Book of the Dead.

The Crape-Chaser: 1891

1917 wire frames for funeral flowers.

THE ” CRAPE-CHASER. “

A Peculiar but Profitable Mode of Gaining a Livelihood.

A reporter met a crape-chaser the other day for the first time to know who and what he was. It was in a local florist’s shop. A rather seedy and lugubrious individual entered. In his hand he carried a small wire frame with wire lettering. It was apparent that it was one of those frames used by florists in preparing wreaths and the like on the occasion of funerals.

The florist seemed to know the newcomer, and he saluted him familiarly.

“Well, Jim, what is it?” he asked.

“Just a few scraps,” said the melancholy one, “funeral’s this afternoon.”

“Well. I can’t do much for you to day, Jim,” said the florist Then he rummaged among his flowers for a few minutes and finally handed Jim a few bunches of withered flowers and fern. “It’s the best I can do,” he said.

“’Never mind,” said the melancholy one, “I reckon I can make ‘em do!” Then he went away as lugubrious as he was when he came.

“Lost some of his family?” the reporter asked.

“Gracious, no, answered the florist with a laugh. “Jim never had any family that I’ve heard of. Jim is a crape chaser, you know.” The reporter didn’t know, and then he was enlightened as to crape chasers. These gentlemen seem to have shown a very considerable degree of originality in their selection of a calling.

They form a portion of that army of persons who in one wav or another make a living out of the fact that men must die. Some of the original members of the army have dropped out of the ranks for good and for all. The professional mourner, for instance, is no longer to be seen. He is no longer an institution respected even by the small boys in the streets.

The crape chaser is another sort of a tradesman. If he was vain-glorious he might call himself a florist, although that would be rather stretching the matter, since he bears about the same relation to a florist proper that a penny cake stand bears to a full-fledged bakery.

The crape chaser’s mode of procedure is simple. He reads the death columns of the daily papers every morning, hangs about undertaker’s establishments in the tenement districts waiting for accounts of deaths. He pays no attention save to those that occur in poor families. He is at the scene of death as soon as or before the crape is hung on the door. He goes armed with frames that are appropriate for floral pieces.

By the exercise of any wile that may seem to fit the occasion he manages to secure interviews with some member of the bereaved family. The crape-chaser displays his frames. He argues that he can supply floral pieces much cheaper than any florist will, and this is true, although he does not tell why he can.

Sometimes he fails to obtain orders, but many more times he succeeds, and in his way does a more or less profitable business, for although he sells so much cheaper than a florist with the flowers he uses for wreaths and the like are the odds, ends and outcastings of the florist’s stock. So his profits are fully in proportion to his outlay.

The trade has its ramifications too. Near one of the local cemeteries there is a man who makes a business of buying up the rusty old frames when the graves are cleaned from time to time and the wrecks of floral pieces taken from them. He cleans and repaints the frames, and then sells them for a song. The crape chasers are his best customers. And so this queer business is carried on. N. Y. Mail and Express.

Baxter Springs [KS] News 9 May 1891: p. 4

 

Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead. And visit her new blog at The Victorian Book of the Dead.

Dead Faces Change: 1886

DEAD FACES CHANGE

The Experiences of Undertakers.

Smiling in Her Coffin

Mother Yearnings Gratified in the Life Beyond

A Corpse That Blushed

Ghastly Scenes

[New York Mercury.]

“Man and boy, I’ve been in the business nearly fifty years, and if I had to begin over again, I don’t know that I would choose any other.” He was a retired undertaker who spoke. The writer was his companion in a coach on a mourning mission to a Long Island cemetery lately, and he ventured the suggestion that there must be a dreadfully depressing uniformity in the business which would be calculated to deaden the finer sensibilities and to induce a hardened callousness in those engaged in it for so long a time.

“There is as much variety among the dead as among the living,” said the undertaker, “and one’s interest is awakened and one’s sympathies excited by the changes of expression so frequently noticeable on the faces of the dead. Dead faces blush and smile and sometimes look sad and inexpressibly mournful.” Becoming reminiscent, the undertaker related some incidents in his long experience, illustrating the peculiar changes of expression that sometimes came over the faces of the dead and which have for the living such thrilling and ghastly interest.

Probably thirty years ago I was called to a house in Bond street. The corpse was a beautiful young woman of thirty or so, of fine, clear blonde complexion and finely formed. She had died suddenly under peculiar circumstances, and her husband, who appeared to be an excitable and jealous man, much older than his wife, was rushing around tearing his hair and cursing and threatening when I was admitted to the chamber of death. I told him that his grief was unseemly and shocking and begged him to restrain himself. He bade me send my assistant to look after the wagon outside, closed the door of the room connected with that in which the body lay, and sitting down in a chair with his knees close to mine, told me that his wife had been unfaithful to him; that he had suspected her for years, and that her death was a judgment of God, not only to punish but to expose her. He said her sister’s husband, who was a doctor, had been her paramour, and while visiting him she had been suddenly stricken with hemorrhage of the lungs and had died in a few minutes. It was a dreadful story. I said that probably he was mistaken, and I urged him to keep calm.

Before leaving the room to listen to the husband’s story I had noticed what a peculiarly wretched and suffering look the corpse had. When I returned and summoned my assistant I felt confident that this sad and disconsolate expression became gradually intensified as our melancholy work proceeded. Even my assistant noticed and commented on the anguished look of the departed, and the thought of it dwelt so much on my mind that I dreamt about the deceased that night, and I told my wife in the morning what the husband had told me, winding up by saying that I felt she was wrongfully accused.

When I called again with the coffin the husband was absent, but the look was frozen and settled in the face. It was impossible to so dispose of the features as to banish that purgatorial look of martyrdom. I was nearly through when the husband entered the room. He presented the greatest possible contrast to the man I had seen two days previously. He was meek, tearful, broken up, and could scarcely speak for sobbing. In a few words he told me that he was a monster unfit to live. He had wrongfully accused the best and most innocent women that ever lived. Her own sister had been present at the whole interview with the doctor, and up to the moment she was stricken with death; and, moreover, had adduced the most convincing evidence to prove that his own ungovernably jealous suspicions had all along been unfounded. I had been standing at the door with my back to the corpse, as he sobbed and spoke.

When I turned again there was a distinct smile playing over the dead features, like moonlight on rippling waters. His eyes followed mine, and he rushed to the coffin, crying: ‘Mary! Mary! Speak to me! Speak to me! She lives! She is not dead!’ He told me to run for Dr. ___, who lived a few doors away, and inside of ten minutes he was present. But he found her to be quite dead, although the smile remained, and with that sweet, serene and happy smile she was laid away to her long repose.

Another case has haunted me for a still longer period. The lady was a widow of fifty or thereabouts, and her only son was a sailor, employed on one of those clipper ships that traded with China, and he would sometimes be away from home two years at a time. He had been away a year when she was taken with her last sickness, which, I think, was rapid consumption. She was a deeply religious and emotional woman, and her son—Theodore, I remember the name was—was a good, affectionate lad of three or four and twenty. Before the end it became painfully probable to the doctor, the attending minister and the nurse that the mother’s life voyage and the boy’s sea voyage, were running a close and uncertain race. He was expected home in November. It was the beginning of that month, and the hope was ever present to the dying mother’s mind that she would be spared long enough alive to see him—to see him if only for a single fleeting moment. Her prayers to that end were touchingly earnest and incessant.

But it was not to be. Just as the ship that bore the boy was sighting the Sandy Hook highlands, the mother’s spirit was passing yearningly away. When I was called upon to perform the last offices for the deceased I was deeply impressed with the look of perplexed suffering that the face wore. Canker sorrow seemed to have eaten away the placid, sweet look that was natural to her wasted but benign face. The day of the funeral came. There were not many present in the modest little home away down on the Hook, but all who were present were acquainted with the family circumstances and the conversation in low tones turned on the poor dead lady’s disappointment in not being permitted to see her son once again before she went on the last long dark journey.

By and by the old clergyman came, and one of his first acts was to look with tear-filled eyes at the sad face of the corpse. He began the exercises in a low tone, but intensely earnest, speaking of the wishes of the deceased and the inscrutable higher Will that had denied their fulfillment. He had got thus far when the young man himself, with a big parcel in his hand for his mother, staggered into the room, and, as he reached the coffin, burst into a torrent to weeping as if his heart would have burst from his bosom. Everybody was plunged into involuntary tears and some minutes elapsed before the minister could recover his composure. The young sailor, who had been gazing with agonizing fervor upon the dear dead face, here put his hand on the cold, pale brow and said: “Oh, mother, speak to me—speak just once!”

And I thought, and the minister said that he thought, that a flickering faint smile played across the features. But whether the smile was there transiently or not, every body saw that the dead face had cast aside suddenly its anxious and despairing look, and that it now looked blissful and happy. It was a great and notable change, and formed the talk among that little earnest circle for many weeks afterward.

The undertaker was asked if within his experience he had seen a dead face blush. He said that he had. It was not by any means a common phenomenon, yet physicians attempted to explain it by physical reasons, which I am not learned enough to enunciate.

A case in which an apparent suffusion of the blush of modesty came under my notice was peculiarly pathetic. During the summer the young lady was staying in the country, and was killed by being thrown from the carriage in which she was riding. She was to have been married to a young lawyer in this city in a week. I was summoned to professionally attend to the corpse and bring it home to her parents in this city. The face of the beautiful girl wore a sweet, reposeful expression as if she had entered into perfect beatitude. Before the funeral ceremonies began in the house the young lawyer, accompanied by the mother, father and sister of the deceased, paid the corpse a sad parting visit. It was quite manifest to me and to all of them that the dead young lady blushed when her lover kissed her lips. So vividly distinct was the blush that the sister started and placed her hand on the cold brow and addressed the deceased by name.

“After all, though,” he said in conclusion, “the saddest and most common look of the dead is that Phoenix-like, marble rigidity—so inscrutable, awe-inspiring. Nothing can so stun the senses or chill the heart-blood of the beholder as that. I have met the dreadful expression in all its forms, and I never could become quite indifferent to it if I were to practice the undertaking business a hundred years.

The Enquirer [Cincinnati OH] 6 November 1886: p. 13

 

Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead. And visit her newest blog The Victorian Book of the Dead.

Dressing the Hair of the Dead: 1888

DRESSING THE HAIR OF THE DEAD.

A Professional Talks About Her Uncanny Occupation.

‘I was only 12 years old,’ said a prominent lady hair-dresser of this city, ‘when I was called on by the friends of an old lady who had died to come and dress her hair.’

‘And did you go?’

‘No; I ran and hid myself under a bed and stayed there a whole afternoon. Although I loved her and had often dressed her hair when she was alive, I could not bear the idea of doing it after death. But I have done many heads since for dead persons, and, while I do not like it, I have a professional pride in making them look well for the last time.’

‘It must be very distasteful to you.’ ‘

‘Not always. It comes in the way of my business, and naturally my employees shrink from going. Sometimes we have a call through the telephone to come to such a number and dress a lady’s hair. One of the young ladies will be sent with curling irons, pomades, hair-pins and other things, only to find that the lady is a corpse. The girl will not nor cannot undertake it, and I go myself. There is only the front hair to crimp and arrange becomingly. One day last week I dressed Mrs __’s hair for the last time. She was young and very pretty, and looked as if asleep. The hair does not die, so that it is easily arranged. When it is a wig or crimped I have it sent to the store, and when it is dressed, take it to the house and put it on. Let me tell you something that happened lately. A lady died in this city who wore a grey wig. I dressed it and put it on. You can just think how surprised I was when, a couple of weeks later, a member of the family came in here and tried to sell it to me. She said they had taken it off just before the casket was closed for the last time.’

‘And did you buy it?’

‘Buy it? Certainly not. It is not very long since a man came in and offered me a number of switches of different shades and colour. I would not buy them, and sent for a policeman, as I thought he had probably stolen them. But as it turned out, they came from an undertaker’s and were the unclaimed property of strangers who had been given pauper burial.’

‘Is it customary to dress the hair of the dead?’

‘It is. I have some customers who have exacted a solemn promise from me that I will dress their hair when they die and make it look natural and becoming. I have even been sent for by those who had only a few hours to live and taken my instructions from their dying lips.’

‘Is the process the same as with the living?’

‘Just the same, except that I do not arrange the back hair in all cases. But sometimes the hair is dressed entirely, just as it would be for an evening party. And I frequently furnish new switches, crimps, or bangs, at the request of relatives who want no pains spared.’

‘And are you not afraid?’

Madame shrugged her handsome shoulders.

‘It is a lonesome task,’ she said, ‘and it certainly does make me nervous. Once the corpse opened her eyes and looked at me as a lady who was holding a lamp went out of the room in a moment, leaving me with a lock of hair in the crimping-pins. A gust of wind blew the door after her, and I was in the dark alone with the dead women. I think if she had not opened the door just at the moment she did I should have fallen insensible,’—

Detroit [MI] Free Press 1 January 1888: p. 4

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil does not have a high opinion of either the intelligence or the moral scruples of the repellent relatives who offered to sell the dead lady’s wig to the hairdresser. They might at least have dyed it so that it was less recognizable, or, more sensibly, taken it to a different coiffeuse, if they needed to offset funeral expenses.

Wigs and chignons for the living were, however, often made of what was termed “dead hair,” or hair cut from corpses. These corpses might be unfortunates from the Workhouse or paupers destined for Potter’s Field; working girls of the streets, murderers or their victims.  If not a black market, it was certainly sub-fusc.  Medical men issued stern warnings about the diseases and insects that might be found in “dead hair,” and argued for prohibiting any hair except that from the living in hair-pieces. These warnings were widely ignored. In 1911, for example, hair from Chinese who died in the Manchurian plague, was being imported by Germany and England without so much as a murmur from the trade authorities.

For more mortuary professions for ladies, please see this link, and this, about a lady undertaker. You will find more information on the popular and material culture of Victorian mourning in The Victorian Book of the Dead, by Chris Woodyard and under the “Mourning” tab on this blog.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

Such a Very Little Coffin: 1901

“JACKY”

[Pall Mall Gazette.]

“Yes, Miss, I’m glad the Society can send me and Baby to the ‘Ome for a bit; but won’t you walk upstairs?”

So spoke Mrs Hunt, a sad-looking young woman with a quiet voice, to the girl standing beside her, and they began to toil up the many stairs of a model lodging-house. At last Mrs Hunt stopped at one of the doors, but before turning the handle she hesitated a moment and said, “You know I lost my Jacky yesterday. You won’t mind, will you?” And then she led the way into the dingy little top back room.

The girl glanced around almost nervously, for this was one of life’s realities that she had never met before; but there was nothing alarming in the sight of the little coffin resting on two chairs. Yet, somehow it made her feel strange, perhaps because it was such a very little coffin. Mrs. Hunt, however, did not seem to notice the addition to her furniture, for she asked abruptly, “Will they want me to take slippers to the “Ome, for I ‘aven’t got none,” and her voice was quite composed, though a trifle dull and hard. So the girl pulled herself together and a serious discussion followed as to the advisability of buying cheap shoes in the Edgware Road, or of getting a second-hand pair “off a friend.”

But all the while that she was speaking, the girl could not keep her eyes from wandering every now and then towards that other corner of the room, and suddenly she began to realise with astonishment that the coffin, though small, was made of polished oak with silver-plated fittings, and it rested on small black draperies. And then the girl remembered that she had seen a baby downstairs decked out in crape and black ribbons, and she knew that this must be Jacky’s baby sister. How could this mother be so very foolish? For Mrs Hunt was a widow, who supported herself and her little ones by doing mangling. If she worked all day and the greater part of the night she could not hope to earn more than eight or nine shillings a week. And yet she could afford to indulge in high-class funerals.

And as the girl thought on these things her heart hardened, and she deemed it her duty to give the woman a few words of advice on the subject of her extravagance. But the words would not come. For somehow that inconvenient little lump in her throat would return when she thought of this woman’s desire to honour her dead even at the cost of starving. She could almost hear her say, “Has my little boy had so many luxuries that you grudge him a decent burial?” And the girl could not speak.

Now, when she had turned to go, and had even laid her hand on the door, Mrs Hunt said suddenly, almost harshly, “Perhaps you’d like to see ’im.” And before the girl could reply, the lid of the coffin was drawn back.

What! Was that still little form that white face, almost terrible in its loveliness—was that the noisy, dirty imp she had seen not many days before? It seemed incredible. She remembered in wonder that she had tried to bring herself to kiss the face that had been almost repulsive in its filth and ugliness; and had tried and had failed. And now she would fain have knelt and have pressed her lips to the little white hand, humbly, reverently, as to something sacred. She would not dare now to touch the face that she had turned from in disgust; it looked so white, so pure, he would have feared to defile it. “Defile!” Yes, that was the word that kept beating itself on the girl’s brain as she stood there looking down. “Undefiled, undefiled, a little child undefiled.”

And where were now her sapient remarks as to the desirability of cheap funerals for the poor? Gone, utterly gone. She was indeed stricken dumb and stood there silently gazing, her eyes wet with tears. And at last, as many before her have done when the feelings of their littleness is borne home to them, she unconsciously used the words of another: words, old indeed, but true for all time, for all men—

“For of such is the kingdom of Heaven.”

But some one heard her. There was a sudden sob, a sound as of the breaking of an ice of distrust and despair, and the mother turned away, her shoulders heaving, her face buried in her apron; and a cry rang out, an exceedingly bitter cry:

“Oh, I wants ‘im! ‘E weren’t much to nobody but me, but I loved ‘im an’ I wants ‘im!”

And this is how it came to pass that the inquiry officer of a certain society failed in her important duty of advocating thrift and economy among the London poor.

Star, 26 January 1901: p. 1

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: One likely possibility that the young inquiry officer did not consider is that many of London’s poor subscribed to Burial Societies. In the 1840s there were over one hundred Burial Societies in London alone. A small sum paid weekly–from a half-penny to a penny and three half-pence and twopence in 1844–ensured that the all-important decent funeral would be within reach.  The pauper funeral held as much horror for the Victorian poor as the Workhouse and was to be avoided at all cost.

It was found in 1907 that eighty-three per cent of all English decedents carried insurance. The authors of that study added severely, “It would seem that the insurance policy lure prompts to funeral extravagance, and that the pitiless extortions consequently exacted from the poor by a certain class of undertakers aggravates needlessly the anguish of the bereaved, and calls for indignant protest from the public upon whom, in some instances, the victims immediately thereafter become a charge.” Preventable Death in Cotton Manufacturing Industry, Arthur Reed Perry, 1919

For more information on the popular culture of Victorian mourning and death, Mrs Daffodil recommends The Victorian Book of the Dead, by Chris Woodyard, also available for something called a Kindle.  Mrs Daffodil understands the principle of paper-making using wood-pulp, but fails to see where kindling comes into it.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.