Текст книги "The American Way of Death Revisited"

Автор книги: Jessica Mitford

After many telephone discussions with various SCI personnel, Marcia got some figures.

First, direct cremation:

Next, assuming that Aunt Jessie breathes her last in Houston and ends up in one of Marcia’s already paid for crypts, the cost would be:

^{(Opening/closing crypt charges rise to $685 on Saturday, $780 on Saturday afternoon, $975 on holidays. Never on Sunday.)}

I asked why they charge $275 to take the body the two hundred yards from the funeral home out to the crypt. “That seemed exorbitant,” said Marcia. “He said it’s a fixed fee within a fifty-mile radius. Even so close, it’s the same because of the ‘cost of maintaining the vehicles, their insurance, and so forth.’ Outrageous! Also, I asked why the minimum service fee of $1,682 couldn’t be discounted for immediate burial the same as it was for cremation, and he said, ‘Well, they do that to make cremation a little cheaper than burial.”

These arrangements may be all very well for Marcia; she’s obviously not your typical Houston funeral buyer. She’s going to dump Aunt Jessie in an old, unair-conditioned crypt in the cheapest casket, no opportunity for neighbors to come and visit her, no religious service or memorial gathering. Those who are inclined to even a modicum of ceremony would have to add a few items from the FPW price list to the above rock-bottom minimum:

There is lots more—clothing up to $192, flowers up to $2,000, memorial booklet, commemorative flag case—but why go on? Readers can check out the SCI facilities in their own communities via 1-800-9CARING. [20]20
  The FAMSA Web site, www.funerals.org/famsa/chains.htm, posts a listing of chain-owned mortuaries, although the rapid rate of acquisitions makes it hard to keep up with the latest on who owns what.


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What happens to all that money? According to Graef S. Crystal, corporate-compensation expert, SCI is one of ten companies out of a total of 414 that he studied in 1995 whose directors and chief executives were most overpaid ( New York Times, June 27, 1995). The directors, he reckons, are overpaid by 95 percent, and CEO Robert Waltrip, founder and brains behind the company, by 62 percent.

I asked Mr. Crystal how much the SCI directors get. A total package, comprising annual retainers, meeting fees, stock options, pension benefits, and deferred compensation, of $102,000 maybe more, he said. “Fair pay, considering the size and performance of the company, would be $49,700,” And the CEO? “He gets a total value of $4,321,000. Using the same factors, a fair package would be $2,670,000.” He added that the CEO’s performance has been “unremarkable, neither very good nor very bad, for the past ten years; but it has improved recently.”

Heading the list of these high-priced directors is Anthony L. Coelho, president and CEO of Wertheim Schroder Investment Services, Inc., better known as Tony Coelho, former Democratic congressman from California. In 1989, under a cloud of scandal, he resigned from the House of Representatives, relinquishing his powerful position as majority whip, just one step ahead of a Justice Department and House Ethics Committee investigation involving his personal investment in a junk bond that was completed with the help of a savings and loan executive (Wall Street Journal, March 29, 1994).

As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 1981 through 1986, according to the Washington Post(January 8, 1995), Coelho, some say, “sold his party’s soul by vastly expanding contributions of business PACs and the expectations those contributors felt in return.”

In 1994, rehabilitated by the passage of time, he joined President Clinton’s inner circle of advisors. But like the Grim Reaper himself, Mr. Coelho is a bipartisan sort of fellow: “I love Bob Dole!” he told the Washington Postin an interview. “I have great friends on the Republican side. [Lobbyist] Jim Lake and I are as close as brothers!”

All of which bodes exceedingly well for the future of SCI’s global village of the dead.

17. FUNERALS IN ENGLAND THEN AND NOW

A public exhibition of an embalmed body, as that of Lenin in Moscow, would [in England] presumably be dealt with as a revolting spectacle and therefore a public nuisance.

—ALFRED FELLOWS, The Law of Burial

In order to appreciate the changes in the funeral landscape that are currently taking place in England, it will be useful to revisit the scene as it existed thirty years ago.

Funerals in England Then

American funeral directors often say, “England is about fifty years behinds us.” To the English, this might sound like a veiled note of warning: does it mean, for example, that fifty years from now much of England’s green and pleasant land will have been converted into Memorial Gardens of Eternal Peace? From Sherwood Forest to Forest Lawn in one easy step? It requires more than a little imagination to visualize a bluff English squire and his hard-riding, rugged-faced lady transformed into Beautiful Memory Pictures, their erstwhile stony and disapproving features remolded by the hand of a Restorative Artist into unfamiliar expressions of benign sweetness. Would their caskets be named (like the American “Valley Forge”) after famous battles—the “Battle of Britain,” in delectable shades of Royal Air Force blue, or “Flodden Field,” with an archery motif? Or perhaps (like the American “Colonial Classic”) after periods in English history: the Restoration Rolick, the Crusader, Knighthood in Flower, the Victorian Voluptuous with overstuffed horsehair interior made expressly to simulate the finest drawing-room furniture of the period? Would the squire and his wife be decked out as for the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, he in top hat and cutaway, she in trailing flowered chiffon, or more simply in Harris tweeds complemented by Practical Burial Gum Boots?

There has been heard in America a singing radio commercial whose words, set to the tune of “Rock of Ages,” go like this:

 
Chambers’ caskets are just fine,
Made of sandalwood and pine.
If your loved ones have to go,
Call Columbus 690.
If your loved ones pass away,
Have them pass the Chambers way.
Chambers’ customers all sing:
“Death, oh death, where is thy sting?”
 

This might be going a little too far for England, but it would be rash to underestimate the penetrating power of American enterprise.

Jingles like this may one day be beamed on commercial telly and adorn billboards in the countryside: “Repose with your mate / Near the bones of the great / By appointment, I ween / To H.M. the Queen.”—Westminster Memory Gardens, Ltd. Or, “Your Heart in the Highlands-Forever!”—Happy Hebridean Haven, Ltd.

Fanciful, perhaps, yet perhaps also the English would be well advised to note that American missionary schemes to “civilize” English funerals are already under way, and some headway has been recorded.

As early as 1926, a member of National Selected Morticians reported to his colleagues on what had most impressed him on a visit to England: “I spent a day in Liverpool with a fine gentleman, one of the very best. They know very little about embalming in any other part of the world, outside of America. They are going to. England has been agitating the matter. I take one of their journals, and they commenced agitating a couple of years ago. I think if we could send some missionaries over there, we would do them a world of good….”

It took a long time for our missionaries to show tangible results for their efforts. The Brits seemed to likebeing fifty years behind their Yank counterparts.

It is of little use to ask English friends to describe the procedures in a typical funeral, because so few have been to one. Whereas Americans flock to the funeral of a coworker, a neighbor, or a casual acquaintance, in England only the closest relations go; consequently many people, even those of middle age, have never actually seen a funeral. Some are, perhaps understandably, reluctant to make inquiries. One friend wrote, “I have not yet been to call at _______ Undertakers, although I walk past there every day; I fear I have the superstitious feeling of an old horse passing the knacker’s yard.”

Another friend spent some time with a country undertaker and sent a full report: “First and foremost, he said—and this is borne out by my own feelings and the experience of everybody I have asked—that we aren’t even on the fringe of imitating Americans yet, and there will have to be a big change in the psychology of everybody concerned before we do. This at least is one area where there’s no attempt to produce a milk-and-water copy of the American original. The undertaker is quite definitely regarded as a tradesman—no cachet attached to the job whatsoever; and in the country he is almost invariably the local builder as well. About embalming, the local man said he’s only had to embalm one corpse in ten years (the family was abroad and the funeral had to be delayed ten days), and there’s not the slightest indication that it is likely to grow in popularity. The whole mentality of burying here is that the dead should be disposed of with quiet respectability and the minimum of fuss and publicity. Decent and quiet, you might say.”

Further investigation convinced me that there were contradictory forces at work. There are those within the trade who are envious of their American counterparts, who would love nothing better than to transplant the American way to England’s unreceptive soil. They find themselves, however, up against the relentless English common sense and preference for the ordinary way of doing things. An English undertaker, speaking at a Dallas meeting of National Selected Morticians, explained the difficulty: “The chief reason why our average is low is the very fact that I have tried to tell you about British character—their desire for moderation. In our own selection room we display a full range of hardwood caskets, oak, walnut, and mahogany. Yet of the clients who can afford the best, 90 percent would choose the traditional coffin. They would say of the caskets, ‘Very beautiful, but too big, too elaborate! We will have an oak coffin like we had for grandfather!’ This is a problem that has concerned us for many years…. I must tell you, also, that our presentation must be accomplished without the use of cosmetics. Heavy cosmetizing would bring the strongest complaints from our clients. They tell us quite firmly, ‘I don’t want Mother touched up!’ ” He does, however, mention “an aspect of American funeral service which appears to be more readily accepted by our British public. All over the country funeral directors are building funeral homes, putting in private chapels and rest rooms. [21]21
  Semantics Note: In England, “rest room” means a room in which to rest.


[Закрыть]They are not comparable with the beautiful buildings I have already seen this last week, but nevertheless, our men have recognized the need and are now beginning to provide the facilities.”

The English trade publications the Funeral Directorand Funeral Service Journalreflect in their pages a predominantly traditional approach, with occasional revealing flashes of possible changes on the way. Their very titles, which must have, to the English ear, an unfamiliar transatlantic ring, tell us something; yet unlike the American funeral magazines, they are modest in format and sparsely illustrated.

The advertisements for the most part call a coffin a coffin, a hearse a hearse, and a shroud a shroud; there is “Coffinex Aqueous Emulsion, [which] supersedes the old method of applying boiling pitch and wax, which was both laborious and uneconomical” (an improvement we can surely applaud); but “casket” is by no means unknown; there is Casketite Bitum Emulsion, “for simpler, more economical sealing of caskets and coffins.” Social events for English undertakers as reported in these journals have not reached the Vault-burger Barbecue stage; they adhere rather to traditional English ideas of what constitutes jolly good entertainment; we are told that “in April a number of members and their ladies attended a performance of ‘The Iron Hand’ given at H.M. Prison, Sudbury.” The editorial writers tend towards conservatism. One of them, describing an American funeral director who distributes “packs of quite good-quality playing cards which, on the back, carry an advertisement for so-and-so’s funeral home,” comments that he “would not like to see such advertising in this country.” Yet there are also reprints from American magazines: how to use the telephone (“never use the personal pronoun ‘I,’ always use ‘we’; speak with warmth in your voice, clearly and with sincere friendliness”); how to set up a casket-selection room, and the like—but they did not seem to have altered the basically English character of these journals.

There was a study course available, a fairly comprehensive text of some seventy-five mimeographed pages, prepared by members of the trade for the “voluntary examination in funeral directing.” Since there is no law in England requiring licensing of undertakers, the study course and examination are in effect an exercise in self-improvement rather than, as in America, a legal requirement.

The study course, like the trade publications, is a strange mixture of old and new concepts about the disposal of the dead, English and American terminology, the traditional English approach combined with aspects of the American Way.

How refreshing to read, for example, that “it is not the function of the funeral director to become the family sympathiser but rather to offer helpful advice.” And that while it is permissible to let the family know that a private chapel is available on the premises for the service, it is “very wrong to be over-persuasive in this matter”; that if they are regular church attenders, “it is certainly good practice to suggest that the Service be held in their own church. This is appreciated by the family and the Clergy.” Equally permissive—in contrast to the attitude of the American burial industry—is the position on cremated remains (“cremains” has not yet found its way across the Atlantic); this is a “matter for the family to decide. The majority seem to prefer the scattering of the cremated remains in the Garden of Remembrance attached to all Crematoria” or at some other spot of their choice. Sentimentality is positively discouraged. Discussing obituary notices, the study course cautions: “In some cases, one is requested to insert over-sentimental verses, and all the Funeral Director’s tact is called upon to dissuade them in their own interest.”

Some agreeably down-to-earth advice was offered about the proper treatment of the corpse itself: “Dress in clean clothing—pyjamas, shirt or nightdress, etc…. Insert the laying out board under the body…. DO NOT TIE THE BIG TOES TOGETHER…. IN NO CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER SHOULD THE ARMS AND HANDS BE SECURED BY POSITIONING THEM UNDER THE BUTTOCKS…. DO NOT PLACE PENNIES OR WET PACKS OVER THE EYES.”

However, there are indications that a new day may soon dawn for the dead in England. A large portion of the course is devoted to the importance of embalming and how to sell it to a reluctant client, apparently best accomplished by not being frank. The words “hygienic treatment,” it is suggested, should be used in discussing the subject with the client: “By this, of course, you mean modern arterial embalming, but funeral directors are generally agreed that in the early stages of the arrangement, the use of the word ‘embalming’ is best avoided…. Although some funeral directors boldly speak of embalming, the majority consider it preferable to describe the treatment by some such term as ‘Temporary Preservation,’ ‘Sanitary Treatment,’ or ‘Hygienic Treatment.’ In this way it is felt that there is less likelihood of associating the modern science with that of the ancient Egyptians.”

The familiar justifications are offered for what one English authority has called “the meaningless practice of embalming”: it delays decomposition, it promotes public health, it restores a lifelike appearance. “The change effected is truly remarkable—gone is the deathly pallor… instead the family sees a life-like presentation of their loved one appearing as though peacefully sleeping. This result is a source of great comfort and has a decided psychological value.” Furthermore, the family may have “open casket or coffin at all times until closed for the Funeral.”

It is to the growing army of embalmers that we must turn for enlightenment on progress in introducing American funeral practices in England. Most English people are astonished to learn that embalming is sharply on the increase there. The British Institute of Embalmers claims over one thousand members. The uphill nature of their efforts to ply their trade can be inferred from an official statement issued by the institute: “Two primary factors have retarded progress. Primarily the fact that customs die hard in this country and in no case is this more evident than in funerals. The introduction of any new methods, apparatus or merchandise was treated with suspicion, not only by the mourners but often by the priest or minister conducting the funeral service…. Up to the present moment there has been little governmental support or recognition of the science. With exceptions, the medical profession ignore it….”

Hard is the lot of the really go-ahead embalmer in England. There is the unaccommodating English law, which requires that a death certificate be obtained and the death properly registered before the embalmer can get going. No chance there of getting started before life is completely extinct.

An English contributor to the American Professional Embalmerdescribes some of the roadblocks he has encountered. The main trouble seems to be that “the open-casket is unknown in this country…. The coffin is invariably closed at the funeral service proper and, more important still, the funeral director is frequently instructed at the first call to close the coffin immediately when the remains are placed in it. This lack of acceptance by the public of a fundamental American concept produces more than one difficulty for British embalmers; with no demand there can be no practice.”

English doctors, we learn, are most uncooperative: “The medical profession in Great Britain exercise a power second to none. Despite the National Health Service, and statements to the contrary, as a pressure group they are supreme… [T]hey would oppose with all the power at their command any attempt to limit autopsies. Indeed, no group can show more rooted opposition to modern funeral service and embalming in particular than this one. They stand squarely behind the cremation movement here, actively campaigning for it, doing all they can to reduce funeral service to little more than simple rubbish disposal.” Not only that, but the doctors are often unkind to the embalmers: “Except between friends and request by a funeral director or an embalmer, cooperation on the part of an examining surgeon will be wasted; if anything more than an ill-mannered rebuff is received it will be calculated obstruction carried even to the lengths of deliberate mutilation.”

With true British grit, the author ends on a note of hope for the future: “There can be no argument about it; in England the embalmer is out on his own and any progress he makes is over hard ground. That does not mean he is a quitter, however; far from it. At the moment satisfactory restoration is almost impossible to achieve but it will be achieved in the end, with help or without it, and no matter how far distant that end may be!” Rather bravely spoken, considering that achievement of the distant end apparently depends upon a complete reversal of the law, of public attitudes, and of views of the medical profession.

Some months after I had read about the ups and downs in the English undertaking trade, I had a chance to visit an English funeral establishment to check the vision against the reality. The very location of the one I visited, in changeless South London, seemed to foreshadow the attitudes I would find there. The West End may present a new façade from year to year—here an unfamiliar skyscraper under construction, there a block of service flats where before had stood the London mansion of some Scottish laird, everywhere the bright awnings and colored tablecloths of the newly imported espresso houses. South London remains the same: the haberdashery and furniture display in shopwindows might have been there for generations; the very buns in the cafés have a prewar flavor. “Clapham Road?” said the corner newspaper vendor whom I asked for directions. “Not far, just a nice twenty-minute walk; it’s just round from where my aunt’s lived for fifty years.” Not the sort of place, I thought, where people would be amenable to newfangled methods in any phase of life, let alone death; and in a way I believe I was right.

Mr. Ashton, whose establishment in Clapham Road is easily the most imposing building in the vicinity, is in some respects far from being a typical English undertaker. Whereas most of his colleagues are very small operators indeed, and generally perform this work as a sideline to some other trade, Mr. Ashton is the owner of nine London branches with a total volume of around twelve hundred funerals a year. Few English establishments could compare with this. Furthermore, he is among the tiny minority in England who routinely embalm all comers, and who might therefore have been expected to have absorbed at least some of the concomitant American approaches to the funeral. For these reasons, he seemed the ideal person from whom to seek clarification about likely trends in English funeral practices.

Mr. Ashton was a charming host. He led me through his entrance hall, conservatively decorated with neutral wallpaper and wine-red upholstered furniture, up the stairs to his private office, where we chatted over a cup of tea. I wanted to know about his own firm; something about the funeral trade as a whole; and, above all, the steps taken and procedures followed in the average English funeral.

Like a great many English undertaking concerns, Mr. Ashton’s is an old established family firm. It has been in existence for a hundred and fifty years, and he is of the fourth generation in the business. There is a growing tendency, he explained, for large firms to take over smaller ones, and this is how he acquired the nine establishments, all located in South London. The smallest of these averages about fifty funerals a year, the largest, three hundred. The clientele is mostly middle and lower class, and comes from South London. He runs his own coffin factory, in which he employs twelve factory hands, woodworkers who make the coffins. He also employs nine managers, nine drivers, an office staff of five, and three full-time embalmers. It takes four months to learn embalming, he told me; the minimum embalmer’s wage is 12 pounds a week (about $34) and “perks”—use of the car, etc. The managers do no embalming; their function is entirely separate.

There are in all Great Britain perhaps ten firms the size of Mr. Ashton’s, in the larger cities such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff, London. In London, there are some 350 major firms, compared with 800 in New York, serving a population of about the same size. The larger firms all make their own coffins. There are a few wholesale coffin companies, which in many circumstances also furnish cars, embalmers, and all services for the smaller establishments.

Discussing the routines that follow between death and the funeral, Mr. Ashton positively exuded the no-nonsense, humbug-free attitudes so prized by this “nation of shopkeepers” in all their dealings, and in this particular calling so reassuring to find. I asked him what happens when a person dies in the middle of the night. American undertakers, to a man, take the greatest pride in rushing to the scene at no matter what hour; in fact, high on their list of “essential services”—and a major justification for their high charges—is maintenance of a twenty-four-hour operation, their ability to remove the deceased any time of the day or night within minutes of death. “I’d send along in the morning,” said Mr. Ashton. “Well, I mean unless the chap dies in the lavatory, or something, which did happen once, and then I had to go along at once, you see.” He explained that they are prepared to come in the night if necessary, “but we certainly don’t encourage it as long as the family is under control. Personally, I’m all for a quiet life and a little peace, and anyway people are more intelligent about such things these days. They realize that nothing can be done until the morning.” Death at home is anyway the exception. Eighty percent of deaths occur in hospitals. In that case, a relative goes to the hospital and procures the death certificate, which the registrar must have before burial can be authorized. The practice of keeping the body at home until the funeral is losing favor. Before World War II, this was done in 90 percent of cases, now in less than 10 percent. The minority who prefer to keep their dead at home tend to be at the opposite ends of the social scale: the very poor (“poorer people are far more traditional”) and the very rich, who are not only traditional but have more room in their houses. “The middle classes say, ‘It’s all unpleasant, let’s get it over.’ ”

We went to look at Mr. Ashton’s stock of caskets and coffins, which are kept in two small rooms. The caskets are styled somewhat after the American ones, only far less elaborate; all are made of wood. The use of metal for this purpose is almost unheard of. In fact, the only difference between an English “casket” and a “coffin” is in the shape, the former being rectangular, and the latter, tapered or “kite-shaped.” The lids of all were shut. Feeling that I ought to make some remark, I murmured, “Lovely, lovely,” which would have done nicely in America, where the funeral men take enormous pride in their stock. “I think they’re perfectly awful-looking things,” commented Mr. Ashton cheerfully. He opened one: “Look at that frightful lacy stuff, and all that ghastly satin.” He told me that there is practically no demand for the caskets; not more than a dozen a year are sold. We proceeded to another small room, containing five or six coffins. The cheapest are made of imported African hardwood or English elm, chosen by the majority of Mr. Ashton’s clients. Next in price is the English oak, and most expensive, mahogany. Vaults, in the American sense of a metal or concrete container for the individual coffin, do not exist (“Quite unnecessary,” said Mr. Ashton), although sometimes a family vault of brick may be built to accommodate six or eight coffins. I asked whether without a vault, earth might tend to cave in as the coffin disintegrates. This apparently is not a problem, although it is customary to wait six months for the ground to settle before putting up a gravestone, which is generally erected upon a concrete slab laid over the grave.

The majority of Mr. Ashton’s funerals average about 50 pounds ($140), to which must be added about half as much again for the additional expense of cemetery or crematorium fee, memorial stone, and the like. The most expensive funeral offered in the ordinary course of his business is 100 pounds ($280), and the most expensive one he remembers doing came to 300 pounds. Cremation costs about 4 pounds, and graves are from 15 pounds up—“London-wise, that is,” said Mr. Ashton. Away from London the cost is lower. The great majority of cemeteries and many of the crematoria are municipally owned.

I noticed that the minimum-priced coffin was not displayed with the others, and here I thought I detected the introduction of a particularly obnoxious American practice; was the cheapest coffin being deliberately concealed from the public gaze? I asked where the coffin for the 33-pound funeral was kept, and Mr. Ashton said there were plenty of them in the factory. Hidden there from the customers? I asked. Of course not! The customers never come up here; very very rarely does a person ask to see the coffins in the course of arranging a funeral. “You mean this isn’t a selection room in the American sense—you don’t bring them up here to choose?” “Good Lord, no!” said Mr. Ashton rather reprovingly, as though the very suggestion was in violation of decency and good taste. “People don’t want to look at these dreadful things. I mean, why should they? All that is settled when we talk to the family in the office.”

We next proceeded to the “rest rooms” where the deceased is laid out until the day of the funeral. They looked like cozy little sitting rooms, comfortably furnished with chairs and curtains. While they did not begin to approach the elegance of slumber rooms I had seen in the States, they were, I was told, exceptionally well appointed for England. I was curious to know to what extent survivors make use of these rooms. This varies quite a bit. A fair number never come at all. Generally, one or two of the immediate relatives, perhaps the widow supported by her grown-up son, come once to see the deceased. “It’s a sort of identification. Having looked, and presumably approved, that’s probably that.” Occasionally the reverse is true; a small percentage come daily with fresh flowers. Among the poorest classes, the neighbors sometimes come.