Premature Burial and the Undertakers

Abstract

The absence of a requirement for a physician to examine a body after death was at the root of the fear of premature burial in the nineteenth century. Despite the founding of a pressure group to improve death certification, along with attempts by undertakers to become verifiers of mortality, popular concerns were only allayed after the building of mortuaries and (in the twentieth century)‚ the increase in cremation and embalming. Historical in its approach, this chapter explores the changing landscape of the disposal of the dead in England and Wales from the 1830s, and in particular, the changing role of the undertaker.

Full text

69
CHAPTER 5
Premature Burial and the Undertakers
Brian Parsons
Although legislation to register deaths was introduced in England and
Wales in the 1830s, it was not mandatory for a physician to examine
a body after death. For many people, the absence of a nal check for
signs of life led to fears of premature burial. In the 1890s, a pressure
group called the London Association for the Prevention of Premature
Burial (LAPPB) was founded to highlight the issue and it campaigned
for improvements in death certication along with the building of “wait-
ing” mortuaries. Despite this move, the lack of any large-scale evidence
that people were being buried alive meant that there was little interest
in achieving greater changes in law or practice. Furthermore, by this
stage, the context of the disposal of dead bodies was changing, a devel-
opment evident in the increased responsibility undertakers were given
for the treatment of the corpse. This might have been an opportunity
for undertakers to promote themselves as veriers of mortality, offering
the bereaved peace of mind by testing for death. However, the tentative
moves to provide this service failed to gain any legitimacy because under-
takers were seen as usurping the role of medical professionals, tradition-
ally regarded as the chief certiers of death.
© The Author(s) 2017
S. McCorristine (ed.), Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Mortality
and its Timings, Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse
and its Afterlife, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58328-4_5
B. Parsons (*)
London, UK
e-mail: bparsonsfstl@gmail.com

70 B. PARSONS
Historical in its approach, this chapter explores the landscape of the
disposal of the dead in Britain from the 1830s, focusing, in particular, on
the tension caused by the absence of secure certication of the dead and
the changing role of the undertaker.
Concerns about premature burial, or “vivisepulchure” as Behlmer
terms it, have existed in Britain since the eighteenth century, if not
longer.1 This fear inspired many writers to speculate on the horrors of
waking up in a cofn after interment: Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Premature
Burial” (1844) is one of most widely known takes on the subject. The
possibility that a trance-like state could be mistaken for death stimulated
people to invent “safety” cofns, many kitted out with warning devices
that could be activated by the supposedly deceased.2 These fears car-
ried through into the twentieth century, with the London cofn manu-
facturer Dottridge Bros continuing to market their “Life-Saving cofn”
until around 1914.3
Those with the greatest fear of being buried alive used their will to
stipulate the means by which physicians should check for signs of life.
For instance, Jeanette Caroline Pickersgill, the rst person to be cre-
mated at Woking Crematorium in March 1885, stated in her will:
I direct my executors after they have obtained a certicate (medical) of my
death and before the cofn is closed to cause the arteries or large veins to
be opened and I bequeath to my executors the sum of ve pounds ve
shillings to be paid by them to Dr Langdon Down or any surgeon who
may open the veins of my neck aforesaid.4
In this case, Dr. Down did not receive payment as Mrs. Pickersgill was
subjected to an autopsy before cremation. Another example from 1909
also involved a physical assault on the corpse:
In the will of Dame Katherine Millicent Palmer, of Dorney House,
Buckinghamshire, who died on January 10th, aged sixty-six years, widow of
Sir Charles James Palmer, leaving estate of the gross value of £2,876, with
net personalty £2,598, the following direction is set down concerning her
remains: ‘I have a great horror of being buried alive; therefore I wish my
nger to be cut, and bequeath £10 to Dr Wilmot or any other doctor who
is attending me at my death for such service’.5
The nineteenth-century fear that death-timings could be mistaken can be
traced to a deciency in the Registration of Births and Deaths Act 1836.

5 PREMATURE BURIAL AND THE UNDERTAKERS 71
This Act required a physician to supply a certicate conrming death,
but it did not stipulate that a physical examination of the body must take
place prior to its issue. On the medical certicate of the cause of death,
the doctor could simply append “I am informed”, leaving any person
without medical qualications or experience to state that life was extinct.
As with all medical services at the time, the mandatory requirement for
an examination would have involved the payment of a fee; for the poor,
this would have represented a tax on death. Furthermore, tests for death
would have been rudimentary and, perhaps, not necessarily conclusive.
If a doctor was summoned, the diagnostic equipment in his bag would
have comprised of little more than a stethoscope, a thermometer, an
ophthalmoscope (for detecting decomposition in the retina), a hypoder-
mic syringe (for injecting ammonia to detect inammation), and a mag-
nesium lamp (for examining circulation between the skin of the ngers).6
Among the poor, one fail-safe indicator that death had occurred was
decomposition, especially the appearance of a green patch on the abdo-
men.7 Keeping the deceased at home in the interval between death and
burial would have provided sufcient time for this change to become
apparent.8 During this period, the undertaker would call to take a meas-
urement and return to encofn the body; a return visit may also have
been necessary to seal the cofn if signicant deterioration had taken
place. It was not until the 1920s, that bodies were brought to the under-
taker for more extensive treatment and transition to the chapel of rest,
so an extended access to the body was important for assuaging fears of
premature burial among the nineteenth-century poor.9 Long periods
between death and burial were not uncommon. In his account of work-
ing as a gravedigger in the Suffolk village of Akeneld from the inter-
war years onwards, William Russ indicated that bodies would be kept
at home for up to twelve days, not only because people “didn’t care to
part with it,” but also because they “were afraid the corpse might still be
alive.”10
The Changing ConTexT of Disposal
Population expansion in the nineteenth century presented numerous
social and economic challenges. As regards the disposal of the dead,
the 1830s saw the introduction of death registration and the end of the
Church of England’s near-monopoly on burial provision by the estab-
lishment of proprietary cemetery companies. By the 1850s, Burial Board

72 B. PARSONS
cemeteries funded by local ratepayers were transforming the landscape of
burial in urban areas. With the increase in places approved for burial, and
an increase in the means for disposing of the dead, the interval between
death and burial was shortened. This allowed fears of premature burial
to ourish, causing further changes in services for the disposal of bodies.
The next section considers ve of the main changes that occurred in the
late nineteenth century.
The rst development was cremation. In January 1874, the publi-
cation of Sir Henry Thompson’s seminal paper “The Treatment of the
Body after Death” led to the founding of the Cremation Society of
England (CSE) and the building, ve years later, of the rst cremato-
rium at Woking (however, because of issues concerning the legality of
cremation, it was not until March 1885 when the cremator was used for
the rst time).11 At rst, this alternative to burial was not popular; there
were two further cremations in 1885, ten in 1886, and thirteen in 1887.
By 1900, only 444 cremations took place at the four crematoria then in
operation, representing only 0.07% of deaths in the UK.
The CSE were aware that cremation could be used to conceal crime
so Thompson joined his fellow physicians in the Society (including the
surgeon Sir Thomas Spencer Wells and Ernest Hart, the editor of the
British Medical Journal) in devising the certication required to ensure
the cause of death had been ascertained. The CSE was inuenced by the
French system in which a Medecin Vericateur was engaged by the state
to conrm death; indeed, Sir Henry included an example of a form used
in the French system in his 1899 book Modern Cremation: Its History
and Practice. Based on this system, the Society required the comple-
tion of a series of certicates by three physicians: one to give the cause of
the death; a second to conrm this information; and a third, appointed
by the crematorium to be the “medical referee,” who independently
reviewed all the documentation. Initially, Thompson himself vetted all
the documents in his capacity as the rst Medical Referee at Woking. A
slightly modied system of this death certication was adopted by all the
other crematoria opening after Woking, and the usage of these docu-
ments became formalised in the Cremation Act 1902. Between 1885 and
the commencement of the legislation in 1903, nearly 3,300 cremations
took place using this documentation.
The second key development was the building of mortuaries. From
the 1870s onwards, the medical press published numerous accounts of
the insanitary conditions in which bodies were retained at home, along

5 PREMATURE BURIAL AND THE UNDERTAKERS 73
with the continued prevarication by parishes, districts, the Metropolitan
Board of Works and the Home Ofce over the provision of mortuar-
ies.12 In 1875, the British Medical Journal surveyed facilities in London
and found that out of the 20 districts that replied, just under half had
no mortuary accommodation, whilst 13 had no post-mortem room.13
The few mortuaries that had been opened, such as at Clerkenwell,
Marylebone, and Bow, were poorly appointed and this put off the people
who needed them most. A report on the health of Marylebone published
in 1875, suggested that the use of the parish mortuary for storing cof-
ns had declined. The Lancet remarked: “The duty of educating the poor
to overcome their prejudice against using mortuaries is as clear as is the
duty of the urban sanitary authorities to provide them”.14 This view was
still prevalent in the 1920s when Bertram Puckle noted,
The thought that the bodies of friends and relations should be taken to a
mortuary suggests to the average mind an indignity, a social degradation.
The mortuary is regarded as especially provided by the State for the bod-
ies of unfortunate outcasts picked up from the gutter, or dragged from the
river, or at the best, as a place where the suicide or a person meeting with
some dreadful accident is impounded till a jury can be called together for
an inquest. We associate it mentally with the prison and the workhouse.15
The Public Health (London) Act 1891 nally made it mandatory
for every sanitary authority in the capital to provide a mortuary.16
Mortuaries could take many different forms: in 1904, the Borough of
Kensington constructed a “chapel of rest”, as it was termed, in Avondale
Park, Notting Hill.17 Despite being located in an area of dense housing,
its use was only modest, as was reported over 20 years later:
We fear, however, that there is a still a tendency of the part of persons liv-
ing in tenements of one, two or three rooms to retain in their tenements
the bodies of deceased relatives awaiting burials, and that the accommoda-
tion afforded by the chapel was greatly overlooked.18
Despite being designated a “chapel of rest”, this facility was on a similar
footing to any other mortuary, being no more than a communal storage
space provided by the local authority. It was, however, undertakers who
addressed popular prejudice against mortuaries by opening private chap-
els of rest where the cofn could rest until the funeral. Furnished in an

74 B. PARSONS
ecclesiastical manner and open to access without charge, such chapels can
be found from around 1914, particularly in the urban areas. These early
mortuaries and chapels of rest were, however, spaces to accommodate
the dead; they were not akin to the “waiting mortuaries” provided in
Paris and elsewhere in Europe, to which the dead were transferred until
decomposition conrmed death.
The third point concerns change within the funeral industry. The
two key functions of the nineteenth-century undertaker were the pro-
vision of the cofn, and the subsequent arranging of transportation to
the place of disposal. Other goods and services were also supplied for
those who could afford it, such as mourning wear (including hatbands
and gloves). As already identied, the undertaker’s contact with the
dead body was no more than lifting it into a cofn, although occasion-
ally embalmments took place for overseas transportation of the dead.
In 1900, there was a turning point in the function of the undertaker
when two embalming tutors toured Britain, leading sessions in the craft
of arterial preservation of the dead, a technique already well-developed
in the United States.19 Practitioners of this method formed an associa-
tion, the British Embalmers’ Society, with the support of uid manu-
facturers, from whom it was hoped undertakers would make purchases.
The Undertakers’ Journal, which had been founded in 1885 and regu-
larly published articles penned by the leading US practitioners, lent
its support to embalmers. However, as with cremation, change was
slow to come to the funeral industry. Very little embalming took place
in the early part of the twentieth century, and when it did, treatment
was at home and was costly. Nevertheless, embalming gave undertakers
a professional credibility by their acquisition of anatomical and sanitary
knowledge, the founding of a qualifying association and, in 1908, the
publication of a code of ethics. This trend toward professionalisation was
symbolised by the creation of the British Undertakers’ Association, with
the primary objective being state registration.
The fourth aspect of changing services in the late nineteenth cen-
tury concerns legislation relating to aspects of disposal. Whilst burial
grounds became increasingly regulated, doctors were still not required
to examine the deceased before giving a death certicate. The CSE pro-
moted the Disposal of the Dead (Regulations) Bill 1884, which was
designed to regulate cremation and also introduce a physical examina-
tion of the deceased, but their initiative failed. Meanwhile, in 1893, the
Departmental Committee on Death Certication drew attention to the

5 PREMATURE BURIAL AND THE UNDERTAKERS 75
absence of mandatory inspection of the body and noted that “in some
instance a skilled observer would only be able to pronounce whether life
was extinct”.20 Again, few of its recommendations were implemented.
The fth area was the reform of the funeral sector. Around the time
that cremation was being promoted in the mid-1870s, the surgeon
and etcher Sir Francis Seymour Haden defended the practice of burial
against the cremationists. Haden argued that, if carried out correctly,
using wicker or papier mâché “Earth to Earth” cofns interred in sandy,
porous soil, would allow the body to deteriorate swiftly to its constitu-
ent elements. This would also allow others to reuse the grave.21 Another
attack on emboldened undertakers came from the Church of England
Funeral and Mourning Reform Association, founded in 1875 by the
Reverend Frederick Lawrence. This group concerned itself with the
“excessive cost and cynical manipulation of funerals by undertakers”.22
Within the funeral industry, the Paddington-based funeral director
and proprietor of The Undertakers’ Journal, Halford Lupton Mills, also
pursued a reform agenda.23 He encouraged the use of the open-sided
horse-drawn hearse, rather than an elaborate closed carriage, and dis-
missed the sale of unnecessary paraphernalia, including the use of mutes
and the carrying of trays of feathers. The trend for advertising a scale of
charges for funerals in newspapers and trade directories also suggests that
some undertakers were keen to distance themselves from the unscrupu-
lous behaviour of some colleagues. Whilst the overall purpose of these
reforms was to reduce funerary expenditure through simplied disposal
practices, they did not, however, address the issue of certication, nor
did they provide reassurance to those concerned by the possibility of
being buried alive. It was the latter that led to the founding of a pressure
group specically for this purpose.
premaTure Burial anD The unDerTakers
In 1896, the London Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial
(LAPPB) was established by William Tebb and a Gloucester-based gen-
eral practitioner, Dr. Walter Hadwen. Tebb and Hadwen were stimulated
by accounts of vivisepulchre in the popular press during 1895, and the
following year Tebb wrote a book on the subject with Edward Vollum
entitled Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented. Both Tebb and
Hadwen were on the fringes of medical orthodoxy because of their sup-
port for anti-vaccination, anti-vivisection, and vegetarian causes. Between

76 B. PARSONS
1901 and 1914, the Association intervened in debates on funerary
practices through its journal, the Burial Reformer (renamed Perils of
Premature Burial in 1909).
Despite the generous coverage of LAPPB in The Undertakers’
Journal, it mirrored the funeral sector as a whole in oscillating between
expressions of ridicule and support for the movement. For instance, in
1898, the editor commented that “Premature burial, [was] an unwhole-
some and unnecessary subject in England”,24 whilst previously stat-
ing that “Tenders for the supply of premature burial stories are not
invited at this ofce”.25 In 1909, when the title of the Burial Reformer
changed, the editor of The Undertakers’ Journal suggested as alternatives
The Medical Sinecurist (insinuating that physicians could earn a healthy
income from certifying deaths) or The Burial Fiction Monthly.26 In its
journal, the LAPPB published many accounts of people who were buried
alive.27 Of these, only a case of catalepsy in 1905 contained any measure
of credibility. This involved a young woman who was certied dead by a
physician acting on information provided by the family. Luckily, she was
discovered alive by an undertaker taking a measurement for her cofn.28
The response of The Undertakers’ Journal was to publish letters request-
ing denite cases of premature burial. The LAPPB must have been very
disappointed when Dr. Frederick Waldo, the South London Coroner,
stated that he had come across no proven cases of premature burial.29
In the year following the founding of the LAPPB, the Secretary of
State for the Home Ofce was asked about a Lancet report that stated
that 15,000 people were buried annually without medical certicates.30
This gure was denied and it was further stated that no cases of pre-
mature burial had been brought to the attention of the Home Ofce.
This did not persuade Sir Henry Thompson who pointed to a national
problem:
Previous to cremation, let me say that it is sine qua non that a careful
examination of the body by two medical practitioners (neither of whom
is related to the deceased) must be made, and the cause of death clearly
stated…In England and Wales an average of fteen thousand are buried
annually without a certicate of any sort, and the proportion is much
larger in Scotland, amounting to about 50 per cent.31
The lack of mandatory death certication was an issue that energised
undertakers, and those concerned about premature burial. In 1905,

5 PREMATURE BURIAL AND THE UNDERTAKERS 77
the British Undertakers’ Association (BUA) was founded, and it joined
the LAPPB in addressing the issue. However, for the undertakers, this
campaign was part of their desire to offer more services and develop
professional credibility; the LAPPB preferred to raise awareness of the
deciencies in the certication system through sensational reporting.
Despite this, The Undertakers’ Journal backed up some of the claims of
the LAPPB in 1908, when it was stated that thirteen cases of premature
burial were reported in the previous year.32
Despite this sensationalism, practical proposals did emerge. Inspired
by examples in France and Germany, the LAPPB campaigned for the
building of “waiting mortuaries” where the corpse could rest until signs
of decomposition proved death had occurred. With grudging use of
public mortuaries as they were, there was certainly no appetite for this
initiative. The following year, the LAPPB suggested that the occupier of
a household should be obliged to instruct a Medical Ofcer of Health to
remove a body into their care prior to burial or cremation.33 Encouraged
by a proposed bill in Massachusetts in 1903, they drafted legislation that
oated the idea of a “death verier” whose role would be to allow burial
only after the body showed signs of decomposition.34
On the part of the undertakers, the funeral director James Broome
argued that medical examiners [death certiers] were too expensive and
that people were not insured if they used their services. He proposed a
solution: “Where uncertainty of death exists…call in a member of the
British Embalmers’ Society who is conversant with signs and tests”.35
Broome recommended that all funeral directors carry out tests for death,
while the founding father of the British Undertakers’ Association and
embalming pioneer, Henry Sherry, appropriately suggested that embalm-
ers should be trained in resuscitation.36 In 1909, a “Death Registration
and Burial Bill” was discussed at the BUA convention by Albert
Cottridge, a London funeral director and advocate of embalming and
the registration of funeral directors. Cottridge argued that each district
should appoint a public certier of deaths; that no death should be reg-
istered unless a medical certicate had been completed following exami-
nation of the deceased; that a physician completing a medical certicate
should be paid 2s 6d (12½p); and that the person registering the death
should receive a certicate from the registrar, then hand this to the cem-
etery for endorsement before being returned to the registrar. The regis-
tration of stillbirths was also to be included.37

78 B. PARSONS
Outside the funeral sector, weaknesses in the certication system were
highlighted. In 1910 a John Bull article by the barrister and legal expert
on burials, Alfred Fellows, raised the issue, while the following year the
Coroners’ Law and Death Certication (Amendment) Bill sought to
introduce recommendations from the 1893 and 1908 Select commit-
tee on death certication and Coroner’s legislation respectively. None of
these efforts, however, yielded any major change and there appeared to
be little in the way of parliamentary or medical support. In 1910, The
Undertakers’ Journal wearily noted that “The present law of death cer-
tication offers every opportunity for premature burial and every facility
for concealment of crime”.38
The outbreak of World War I curtailed the enthusiasm of the LAPPB,
but by 1919 it was still calling for a public certier of deaths. One of its
members, the Reverend Hugh Chapman, chaplain of the Savoy Chapel,
suggested that if a Cabinet Minister were to be buried alive, public atten-
tion might be awakened to the issue.39 In 1922, a less sensational com-
ment came from the Association’s president, Sir George Greenwood MP,
who declared that the present certication system was “a disgrace and
a national danger”. The following year, it was the turn, once again, of
the undertakers to propose legislation, and the BUA’s secretary, James
Hurry, suggested that all undertakers enlist the support of their MPs to
change the law. He proposed:
That it shall be compulsory for medical men to view the body after
death before granting a certicate
That the cause of death shall be placed on the certicate by the
Registrar
Registration of still-born children.40
This coincided with the undertakers also drafting legislation for state reg-
istration containing a clause that members must attend a course of study
in sanitation (embalming) and care of the deceased.41
Further proposed bills to improve the certication system were
discussed by the BUA in 1922, whilst the President of the British
Medical Association, Professor David Drummond, advocated a com-
pulsory post-mortem examination. This was a certain, but costly and
controversial way of preventing premature burial.42 Some improve-
ment came with the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1926,

5 PREMATURE BURIAL AND THE UNDERTAKERS 79
particularly in respect of stillbirths and certication before disposal,
but there was no broad political support for the public certier and
still no requirement for a doctor to see the body after death, despite
the insertion of a clause requiring this during the third reading of the
bill.43
By the interwar years, the landscape of funerals and the work of the
funeral director had changed. In 1927, a second association, the British
Institute of Embalmers (BIE), was founded to provide formal train-
ing and a qualication. As the number of practitioners and availability
of the treatment increased, the cost decreased and more funeral direc-
tors advocated embalming. Recognising the issue of premature burial,
the BIE syllabus commenced with instructions on how to test for death
before treatment. Whilst the comment of the American embalmer, O.K.
Buckhout, that “embalming prevents the possibility of premature burial”
was correct, the consequence of raising and injecting the carotid artery
if the person was still alive would have been catastrophic.44 Testing for
death by funeral directors and embalmers was logical as they had the
experience of handling the dead on a routine basis. Cottridge included a
chapter on the subject in his book Anatomy and Sanitation, published in
1925, while Medical Ofcers of Health addressing the annual BUA con-
vention frequently referred to the need for the tests to be carried out.45
The merits of the different tests often became a discussion point within
the pages of the trade journals.46
In this changed landscape, testing for death was a service that gave
people condence that funeral directors and embalmers could treat the
body appropriately. This condence was especially important in the
1930s when it was claimed that 60% of deaths were certied without
the doctor having seen the body.47 Despite some support from general
practitioners for their practice, funeral directors and embalmers did not
receive universal backing from the British medical community. Not only
did training for embalming lack external accreditation, but embalming
tutors did not typically have medical experience. But perhaps the key rea-
son for the reluctance of the medical community to approve of funeral
directors having a role, similar to the French Medecin Vericateur was
that this would have usurped the doctor’s presence at the dying person’s
bedside.
Despite the lack of formal validation in their quest, undertakers con-
tinued to be interested in the tests for death. In 1927, a dye was dem-
onstrated at the BUA Convention that could be injected into the body

80 B. PARSONS
to determine whether life was extinct. The effects of the “infallible and
harmless” Obiturin were discussed in a report of the proceedings:
Previous to the lecture Mr AG Hurry had submitted himself to an experi-
mental demonstration to the effect of Obiturin on the living human body.
The injection was made in Mr Hurry’s forearm while a like experiment
was performed upon the lecturer by Ald [Alderman] Kenyon. The result
was awaited with great interest and those present had the satisfaction of
observing an interesting reaction, Mr Hurry going round the room in
order that all present might examine at close quarters the green discoloura-
tion which proved that he was very much alive.48
By the late 1930s, physicians were required to examine bodies and sign
death certicates in the increasing number of state institutions in Britain.
This trend continued particularly after the founding of the National
Health Service in the late 1940s. Despite a continued low preference for
cremation (in 1927 only 0.59% of deaths were followed by cremation),
people could now be condent that premature burial was unlikely given
the requirement for two physicians to carry out a careful external exami-
nation of the body.49 However, while there is evidence to show that in
urban areas the preference for cremation shifted dramatically when local
facilities were provided, it would be another 40 years before the trend
spread outside the cities. It was only in 1965 that cremations outnum-
bered burials for the rst time.50
The LAPPB, meanwhile, limped along into the 1930s.51 Hadwen
died in 1932, and three years later the Association become afliated
with the National Council for the Disposition of the Dead (NCDD),
an organisation with an agenda to promote cremation along with the
registration of funeral directors. However, the minutes indicate that by
the second meeting, the LAPPB was not listed as a participant, and the
NCDD failed in any case due to lack of support.52 The quest for a public
certier and the construction of “waiting” mortuaries was never realised,
particularly as by the 1940s the vast majority of funeral directors had
opened chapels of rest in their private premises, where more embalming
was taking place. Remarkably, the law was never changed to require a
doctor to examine a person after death, unless cremation was called for.
While concerns about premature burial in the nineteenth century
had their basis in a deciency in legislation and medical practice, for

5 PREMATURE BURIAL AND THE UNDERTAKERS 81
most people, declaration of the fact of death would often have come
from informal care-givers who nursed the dying. Their ability to recog-
nise the boundary between life and death was solely dependent on past
experience. Given the landscape of death and burial in Britain today,
with professional funeral directors managing the treatment and disposal
of most corpses, the informal knowledge about bodies and decomposi-
tion that people, especially the poor, possessed is worth reecting on.
Yet, the number of cases where the signs of death were misinterpreted
needs to be viewed in perspective. While the LAPPB highlighted only
a few factually proven incidents, the scale of the issue was unknown.
It was one thing if a person was found to be living before burial, but
quite another if a person was found to have lived after interment had
taken place. Theoretically speaking, without mass exhumations, it is
impossible to know how many bodies show signs of life after interment.
Undertakers seized on this macabre situation as an opportunity to exer-
cise power over the body by becoming the self-appointed person to carry
out the tests for death. Although it was not easily gained, this power
gave them a new status as quasi-medical practitioners and helped shed
the Dickensian image of disreputability inherited from their nineteenth-
century forebears.
Today, the possibility of premature burial in Britain has been dimin-
ished by several factors: Due to shifts in the culture of death and dying,
a large proportion of deaths now take place in institutions where phy-
sicians with a range of diagnostic equipment are on hand to conrm
death. Furthermore, the majority of deaths are now followed by crema-
tion, and this requires two doctors to examine the deceased. In addition,
the interval of 5–14 days between a person’s death and funeral, along
with the widespread adoption of embalming, has reduced the possibil-
ity of a premature burial. Nevertheless, knowledge of the tests for death
still remains part of the Diploma in Funeral Directing examination in
Britain, while the National Association of Funeral Directors’ Manual of
Funeral Directing states: “Every funeral director should be able to sat-
isfy himself, and on occasion the family, that death has actually taken
place”.53 However, as legislation still does not require a doctor to exam-
ine the deceased before completing the Medical Certicate of the Cause
of Death, the issue continues to engage the minds of funeral directors, if
not the general public.

82 B. PARSONS
noTes
1. George K. Behlmer, “Grave Doubts: Victorian Medicine, Moral Panic,
and the Signs of Death”, Journal of British Studies, 42:2 (2003), p. 207.
See also Jan Bondeson, Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most
Primal Fear (New York, 2001); Joanna Bourke, Fear: A Cultural History
(London, 2005).
2. Ralph H. Major ed., “Devices to Prevent Premature Burial”, Journal of
the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 3:1 (1948), pp. 161–171.
3. “The Life-Saving Cofn”, The Undertakers’ Journal [hereafter TUJ],
36:2 (1912), p. 38. See also “Cofn for the Living”, TUJ, 20:5 (1905),
p. 116.
4. Will dated 20 December 1882, copy in author’s collection.
5. “Horror of Premature Burial”, TUJ, 24:8 (1909), p. 52. See also
“Making Sure of Death”, TUJ, 24:5 (1909), p. 105; “Fear of Premature
Burial”, TUJ, 42:9 (1927), p. 318.
6. Behlmer, “Grave Doubts”, p. 217.
7. “Death Certicates: Urgent Need of Reform of the Law”, TUJ, 26:11
(1911), p. 296. See also “Fear of Premature Burial”, British Undertakers’
Association Monthly [hereafter BUAM], 10:10 (1931), p. 232.
8. See Julie-Marie Strange, Death, Grief and Poverty in Britain, 1870–1914
(Cambridge, 2005).
9. See Brian Parsons, The Undertaker at Work: 1900–1950 (London, 2014).
10. Ronald Blythe, Akeneld: Portrait of an English Village (New York,
1969), p. 313.
11. See Brian Parsons, Committed to the Cleansing Flame: The Development of
Cremation in Nineteenth-Century England (Reading, 2005).
12. See Pam Fisher, “Houses for the Dead: The Provision of Mortuaries in
London, 1866–1889”, The London Journal, 34:1 (2009), pp. 1–15.
13. See “Mortuaries for the Metropolis,” The British Medical Journal (1875),
pp. 802–803.
14. “Prejudice against Mortuaries”, The Lancet (1875), p. 331.
15. Bertram S. Puckle, Funeral Customs: Their Origin and Development
(London, 1926), p. 28.
16. Albert Chambers Freeman, The Planning of Poor Law Buildings and
Mortuaries (London, 1906); “A Public Mortuar y and Post-Mortem
Room”, The Lancet (1870), p. 318.
17. Borough of Kensington Council Minutes, 29 March 1904, p. 236;
5 July 1904, p. 346. The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, Local
Studies Library.
18. Ibid., 18 January 1927, p. 111.
19. See Parsons, The Undertaker.

5 PREMATURE BURIAL AND THE UNDERTAKERS 83
20. Reports from the Select Committee on Death Certication (London, 1893),
p. xiii.
21. Parsons, Committed to the Cleansing Flame, pp. 204–220.
22. Ibid., p. 212.
23. See Brian Parsons, “Halford Mills: Funeral Reformer and Pioneer of
Embalming”, Funeral Service Journal (2005), pp. 64–72.
24. “Notes”, TUJ, 13:6 (1898), p. 83.
25. “Notes”, TUJ, 11:6 (1896), p. 82. See also “Editorial: How to Prevent
Premature Burial”, TUJ, 18:7 (1903), pp. 165–166.
26. “Notes”, TUJ, 24:3 (1909), p. 50.
27. “Burial Alive”, TUJ, 13:8 (1898), p. 124; “Notes”, TUJ, 13:11 (1898),
p. 159; “Reported Cases of Premature Burial”, TUJ, 18:5 (1903),
p. 110; “Recent Live Burial Cases”, TUJ, 19:5 (1904), p. 97.
28. See “Notes”, TUJ, 20:2 (1905), p. 26; “The Accrington Catalepsy Case”,
TUJ, 20:2 (1905), p. xi.
29. “Letter to the Editor. Burial Alive”, TUJ, 16:8 (1901), pp. 188–189;
“Notes”, TUJ, 19:2 (1904), p. 36.
30. The Lancet (1897), pp. 1155–1156.
31. “Cremation”, TUJ, 12:7 (1897), p. 95.
32. “Editorial. Premature Burial”, TUJ, 23:2 (1908), pp. 35–36; “Premature
Burial. Thirteen Cases During the Past Year”, TUJ, 23:2 (1908), p. 36;
“Notes”, TUJ, 23:3 (1908), pp. 53–54.
33. “A Bill to Prevent Alive Burial”, TUJ, 16:6 (1901), pp. 136–137.
34. “Notes”, TUJ, 18:12 (1903), p. 260; “Notes”, TUJ, 19:12 (1904),
p. 245; “Notes”, TUJ, 20:1 (1905), p. 2.
35. “Letter to the Editor. The Prevention of Premature Burial”, TUJ, 20:1
(1905), p. 16.
36. H. Sherr y, “The Sanitary Advantages of Modern Embalming”, TUJ, 20:8
(1905), pp. 188–189.
37. A.J.E. Cottridge, “The Death Registration and Coroner’s Bill”, TUJ,
24:7 (1909), pp. 171–172.
38. A. Fellows, “Death Certicates: The Weaknesses of the Present Law”,
TUJ, 25:11 (1910), p. 266; “Coroners’ Law and Death Certication
(Amendment) Bill”, TUJ, 25:12 (1910), pp. 292–294.
39. “Premature Burial”, BUAM, 1:11 (1922), p. 251.
40. “Registration of Deaths”, BUAM, 2:9 (1923), p. 248.
41. “Registration”, BUAM, 1:11 (1922), pp. 250–251.
42. “Post-Mortem Examinations for All”, BUAM, 1:4 (1922), p. 74.
43. “Births and Deaths Registration Bill”, TUJ, 41:3 (1926), p. 73; “Notes”,
TUJ, 41:4 (1926), p. 105. See also “Births and Deaths Registration
Bill”, Hansard, 26 February 1926, Cols 977-998; “Births and Deaths

84 B. PARSONS
Registration Bill’ Hansard, 18 June 1926, Cols 2684-2692; S.A. Smith,
“Cremation and Crime”, TUJ, 45:9 (1930), pp. 295–298.
44. “The Art and Use of Embalming”, TUJ, 15:7 (1900), p. 78.
45. A.J.E. Cottridge, Anatomy and Sanitation (London, 1925), pp. 103–104;
“Proposed Syllabus of Instruction in Sanitation”, BUAM, 2:1 (1922), p. 2.
46. E.P. Vollum, “Last Tests for Death”, TUJ, 19:4 (1904), pp. 80–81. See
also F.A. Sharpe, “Modes of Death”, BUAM, 1:12 (1922), p. 276; A.J.E.
Cottridge, “Signs of Death”, BUAM, 11:4 (1931), pp. 82–83; G.C.F.
Rose, “Tests for Cause of Death”, BUAM, 11:8 (1932), p. 183.
47. “Editorial: Imagination and Progress”, TUJ, 45:2 (1930), p. 56.
48. “Lecture on Obiturin”, BUAM, 7:2 (1927), pp. 44–46.
49. See also “Premature Burial”, The Times, 31 March 1927; “The Federation of
Cremation Authorities in Great Britain”, TUJ, 42:7 (1927), pp. 245–246.
50. See Peter C. Jupp, From Dust to Ashes: Cremation and the British Way of
Death (Basingstoke, 2005).
51. “Personal”, The Times, 10 July 1930; “News in Advertisements!”, The
Times, 24 June 1931.
52. Jupp, From Dust to Ashes, pp. 114–115; “Prevention of Premature
Burial!”, The Times, 5 February 1936; “National Council for the
Disposition of the Dead”, BUAM, 14:12 (1935), p. 246.
53. Manual of Funeral Directing (London, 1976), p. 45.
auThor Biography
Brian Parsons has worked in funeral service in London since 1982. His Ph.D.
focused on the impact of change, during the twentieth century, on the funeral
industry. He is the author of The London Way of Death, Committed to the
Cleansing Flame: The Development of Cremation in Nineteenth Century England
and The Undertaker at Work: 1900–1950.

5 PREMATURE BURIAL AND THE UNDERTAKERS 85
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