RECOMMENDED READING
If you’re looking for a professional textbook that will teach you everything you need to know about embalming, you can’t do better than the third edition of Robert G. Mayer’s Embalming: History, Theory, and Practice (McGraw-Hill, 2000). For a vivid, powerfully written account of a typical embalming—one that will really make you feel what it’s like to perform the procedure—check out “The Embalming of Jenny Johnson,” the opening chapter of Mark Harris’s Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial (Scribner, 2007). Jessica Mitford also offers a vivid and typically acerbic description in The American Way of Death (Simon & Schuster, 1963).
If embalming is taken out of the funeral, then viewing the body will also be lost. If viewing is lost, then the body itself will not be central to the funeral. If the body is taken out of the funeral, then what does the funeral director have to sell?
—JOHN KROSHUS (as quoted by Jessica Mitford)
How to Beat the
High Cost of Embalming
(Hint: Skip It)
Many people assume that a dead body must be embalmed before burial. This is a belief that undertakers are only too happy to encourage since it allows them to add a few thousand extra dollars to their (already hefty) bills. The only problem is, it’s simply not true.
Up until the mid-nineteenth century bodies were rarely embalmed in America since the modern arterial injection technique wasn’t invented until the Civil War. Once perfected, it quickly became the cornerstone of the burgeoning funeral industry—the specialized, quasi-scientific procedure only a certified mortician could perform. By the mid-twentieth century corpses were embalmed so routinely that most people assumed it was obligatory. It wasn’t until the 1963 publication of Jessica Mitford’s landmark exposé, The American Way of Death, that the public learned the truth: that embalming is a very recent and peculiarly American practice based on a number of dubious rationales.
Some traditions forbid it altogether. Orthodox Judaism, for example, decrees that a person must be buried within twenty-four hours of death and allowed to decompose naturally in the earth. But even if you’re not Jewish (or Muslim, another faith that regards embalming as a form of desecration), there are few compelling reasons to be embalmed.
Just a handful of states require it by law—and only in highly specific circumstances. (In Kansas, Idaho, and Minnesota, embalming is mandatory if a body is to be shipped by plane or other common carrier; in Alaska and New Jersey, it’s required if the body is to be transported out of state and won’t reach its destination within twenty-four hours of death; and in Alabama, it must be done for any out-of-state transport by any means.) It is not required in any state if burial takes place within twenty-four hours.
Despite the claims of morticians who insist that embalming helps safeguard society from contagious disease, medical authorities have determined that unembalmed corpses pose no threat to the public health. And though grieving survivors like to think that embalming will keep their loved ones in a state of eternal preservation, the sad fact is that even a corpse treated with heavy-duty chemicals will eventually rot.
So why embalm? The usual reason is to prepare the body for the traditional viewing at a funeral home. Even in this case, however, embalming isn’t necessary if the mortuary is equipped with refrigeration facilities.
And, of course, there are alternatives to a prolonged public display of the deceased. Family members can view the body privately right after death, then keep the casket closed at the funeral home. A visitation—at which friends and family members gather to offer condolence and comfort to the bereaved—can also be held at home without the body present at all.
In short, “beyond the fact that embalming is good business for the undertaker” (as Mitford writes), there aren’t a whole lot of persuasive reasons to do it.
DEATH FUN FACT
The word hearse can be traced back to the Latin word hirpex, meaning “rake” or “harrow” (a piece of farming equipment that, in the old days, consisted of a wood frame fitted with iron teeth, used to break up clods in plowed land). Since hearses bear no resemblance at all to either of these agricultural implements, this seems to be a puzzling etymology.
Originally, however, the term hearse was not applied to a vehicle used to transport corpses to the cemetery—for the simple reason that such vehicles didn’t exist before the early 1600s. Back then, people were buried so close to home that their bodies were simply carried to the local churchyard on the shoulders of family members or friends. During the funeral service, however, the coffin was often enclosed within an ornamental framework of wood or wrought-iron. These structures had spikes sticking from the top to hold candles or other decorations (such as banners, in the case of the aristocracy). “With its rows of upended spikes,” writes funeral vehicle historian Walter M. P. McCall, “the ornamental framework indeed resembled an inverted rake or farm harrow.”
Eventually, these ceremonial structures—known as herses—became so elaborate that some of them looked like miniature Gothic cathedrals. As they grew more cumbersome, and as cemeteries were laid out at greater and greater distances from densely populated towns, they could no longer be carried to the gravesite by hand. They were placed on wheels and drawn to the cemetery by horses. By the mid-seventeenth century, the term hearse had assumed its modern meaning.
American Hearses:
Going in Style
We tend to assume that our modern-day inventions are always better than the once-trendy objects they replaced. And this is often the case. A pocket-size cell phone that can take pictures, download video games, and play “Highway to Hell” when it rings is considerably cooler than a princess telephone with an illuminated dial.
Still, there are exceptions. Take automobiles. While today’s boxy, nondescript cars may outdo their predecessors in terms of gas mileage, safety features, and comfort, there’s no way that a Honda Civic can match, say, a 1959 Chevy Impala for sheer automotive pizzazz.
The same holds true in another vehicular category: hearses. A brand-new Cadillac Medalist “funeral coach” may offer the latest in graveyard transport technology: galvanized steel inner structure, patented loading door, sixteen-roller bier for easier casket handling. But sleek as it may be, it’s still a pretty stodgy piece of machinery compared to some of the amazingly designed hearses of the past.
Fourteenth-century wrought-iron hearse.
Though the average early American hearse was little more than a black-painted farm wagon pulled by a single horse, fancy funeral equipages had become standard by the mid-nineteenth century. The well-appointed hearse of the post-Civil War era typically had tasseled velvet drapes behind French plate-glass windows, a roof ornamented with decorative wooden urns, a cloth-covered driver’s seat flanked by tall carriage lamps, and a matched set of black horses. Styles became even more lavish as the century progressed. By the 1890s, the finest American “funeral cars” featured intricately carved wooden panels in the shape of heavy draperies, ornate side columns, silver-plated roof rails, and other embellishments.
Apart from ceremonial occasions such as state funerals, horse-drawn hearses essentially disappeared from the American scene by the start of World War I. As early as 1905 (according to funeral transport historian Walter M. P. McCall), at least one enterprising undertaker had mounted a hearse body onto an automobile chassis. Four years later, the Crane and Breed Company of Cincinnati introduced the world’s first factory-built “auto-hearse.” Equipped with a four-cylinder, thirty-horsepower engine, the inaugural model was a black-painted trucklike affair with a single, somewhat bizarre decoration sitting on its roof: a facsimile of the famed tomb of Scipio, an ancient Roman sarcophagus housed in the Vatican museum. Within a few months, a new and more lavishly appointed model was on the market. In addition to the rooftop replica of Scipio’s tomb, this one featured the traditional design elements found on Victorian hearses: richly carved wood draperies framed by elaborate columns.
By 1919, the tall, boxlike, heavily adorned automotive hearse—essentially the body of a horse-drawn “funeral car” attached to a motorized chassis—had become the industry standard.
Like virtually everything else in American culture, from women’s clothing to pop music to sexual mores, hearse fashion underwent a radical change during the Roaring Twenties. Apart from a few manufacturers who clung to old-fashioned styles, U.S. makers of funeral vehicles switched to a jazzy modern design in keeping with the spirit of the age. The new look, which came into vogue in the first years of the decade, was the long low limousine. While a few models were decked out with the usual gloomy adornments, most were so uncluttered that—apart from the cast metal “funeral coach” name-plates displayed in the windshields—it was virtually impossible to distinguish them from luxury passenger cars.
Evolution of the American hearse, 1883–1968. Courtesy of Walter P. McCall Collection.
By the time of the Great Depression, however, the once-snazzy limousine hearse, with its low rectangular body, had come to seem staid and outmoded. The preferred new look during the 1930s featured a curvy, aerodynamic coach. At the same time, ornate side panels of carved wood made to resemble draperies—a design element dating back to the horse-drawn era—made a major comeback. The resulting combination of streamlined bodies bedecked with Victorian embellishments resulted in some truly spectacular vehicles, such as the lavishly draped eight-columned Sayers and Scovill Olympian model of 1934 and the 1939 Eureka, whose interior—with Gothic inlaid wood ornamentation, sconce lights, and statuary angels—resembled a miniature cathedral.
As the 1940s dawned, various hearse makers continued to decorate their vehicles with carved wood panels (some in the shape of arched church windows instead of drapes). The outbreak of World War II, however, put an abrupt halt to funeral car production. Like the rest of the U.S. auto industry, hearse makers devoted their resources to the war effort, turning out a variety of specialized military vehicles. When hearse production resumed in the mid-forties, fashions had changed again. The old carved-panel look was gone for good. In its place was the stately “landau” hearse, featuring a faux-leather rear roof with bow-shaped chrome bars on either side.
The 1950s witnessed the last gasp of really eye-catching hearses, with some of the spiffier models sporting such typically space-age features as rocket-ship fins and twin-bullet taillights. Since then, all trace of ostentation has vanished from American funeral coaches, which now conform to a single style, the impeccably tasteful landau hearse: stately, dignified, and so devoid of personality that only a corpse could love it.
RECOMMENDED READING
Thomas McPherson’s out-of-print American Funeral Cars and Ambulances Since 1900 (Crestline, 1973) is the bible of serious hearse historians. A more up-to-date survey is Walter M. P. McCall’s lavishly illustrated American Funeral Vehicles 1883–2003, one of the many highly specialized books for “transportation enthusiasts” published by the Iconografix company of Hudson, Wisconsin.
Hearses for the
Harley Crowd
Few people are as image-conscious as bikers. If you’re roaring down the highway on a customized chopper, you’ve got to look the part: bald head, handlebar ‘stache, massive arms covered with the perfect mix of patriotic and satanic tattoos, a black T-shirt printed with a bad-ass slogan on back: “If you can read this, the bitch fell off.” That sort of thing.
Given how important it is to maintain this outlaw image from cradle to grave, no self-respecting biker, after living fast and dying young, is going to want to be conveyed to the cemetery in anything as stodgy as an ordinary limousine hearse. Fortunately, a few visionary entrepreneurs have come up with the perfect solution: the motorcycle hearse.
HEARSE OF THE
RISING SUN
American hearse makers have produced some spectacular vehicles over the years (such as the limited-edition 1929 Sayers and Scovill “Signed Sculpture” model, with bronze relief side panels depicting a grieving angel clutching a memorial wreath). For sheer exotic splendor, however, nothing made in the United States matches a Japanese reikyusha.
Used to transport a body from the funeral home to the crematorium, the reikyusha is an eye-popping hybrid of modern automotive technology and traditional Asian design. Its body consists of a standard luxury car, such as a Cadillac or a Toyota Crown, which is subjected to a radical modification. The roof behind the driver’s seat is cut away and the entire rear section of the car is converted into a kind of flatbed onto which is mounted an elaborately carved wooden shrine, covered in gold and adorned with dragons, lions, and other traditional devices. The result resembles a miniature Buddhist temple grafted onto a limo.
The earliest prototypes of the reikyusha first appeared around 1910, though it was not until the post-World War II era that a Tokyo hearse maker named Yonezu Saburo began producing these vehicles on a large scale. Today, the Yonezu Corporation manufactures about 70 percent of all Japanese hearses.
This ingenious product comes in two styles. Most popular is the sidecar model. Though its history is a little vague, it appears to have been pioneered in the United Kingdom following World War II, when motorcycle enthusiasts began removing their sidecars so that coffins could be carried on the chassis. The practice grew in popularity throughout the 1990s, particularly among British bikers. In 2002, the Reverend Paul Sinclair, a Pentecostal minister based in Derbyshire, England, launched a company called Motorcycle Funerals Ltd. (www.motorcyclefunerals.com), Britain’s first (and only) provider of professional sidecar hearse funeral services.
Here at home, a number of individuals have entered the same business. For a modest fee of $300 plus $1 per mile round trip from his headquarters in Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, Al Skinner of Biker Burials (www.bikerburials.com) will transport his motorcycle hearse—a Harley-Davidson Road King with custom-built sidecar assembly—to your home and carry your dear departed to the grave in Easy Rider style. The Starwalt Motorcycle Hearse Company of Springfield, Illinois (www.motorcyclehearse.com), offers a similar service with a high-tech hydraulic rig for convenient casket handling. Starwalt also offers its sidecar hearses for sale, so for a mere $14,200 (or $5,500 for a basic nonelevating model) you can start your very own motorcycle funeral business—or just ride around with a coffin attached to your chopper, an accessory guaranteed to enhance your hell-on-wheels rep.
Motorcycle hearse. Courtesy of Al Skinner Enterprises, LLC.
Bikers nostalgic for the vanished glories of the American past—when the bullet-ridden bodies of sociopathic Western outlaws were conveyed to Boot Hill in high style—might prefer the second, more elaborate type of motorcycle hearse. This consists of a full-scale old-fashioned glass-sided hearse hitched to a three-wheeled “trike” motorcycle. You can hire or purchase one of these impressive rigs from the Tombstone Hearse Company of Alum Bank, Pennsylvania (www.tombstonehearse.com). Another outfit, Justin Carriage Works of Nashville, Michigan, also sells handsome pseudo-Victorian trailer-style motorcycle hearses, along with a wide range of other handcrafted vintage vehicles (www.buggy.com).
ALL ABOARD
FOR THE CEMETERY!
One of the more curious contraptions ever built was the self-contained, all-in-one “funeral bus,” which enjoyed a deservedly brief life in the years just before and after World War I. Designed to eliminate the need for multivehicle processions, this colossal conveyance, the size of a trolley car, was big enough to accommodate an entire funeral party—undertaker, pallbearers, and two dozen mourners—along with the casket. Though used briefly in a few big cities, the funeral bus never caught on and quickly lapsed into extinction (you can see one of the few surviving examples, a 1916 Packard model, at Houston’s National Museum of Funeral History).
Hearse Clubs:
For Connoisseurs of Fine
Vintage Funeral Coaches
Some people grow sad when they pass a funeral cortege on the road. Others feel a twinge of superstitious dread. And then there are those who look at the l
ead vehicle and think, “Wow, that’s one sweet ride!”
If you fall into the latter category, you might consider joining one of the many “hearse clubs” that have sprung up across the country. The members of these organizations share a deep appreciation of vintage funeral vehicles (many of which are indeed masterpieces of automotive craftsmanship). They buy and lovingly restore old hearses (as well as funeral limousines and flower cars), drive them around on weekends, have festive get-togethers, and exchange photos, anecdotes, and customizing tips in newsletters and on websites. In short, they are no different from any other automotive aficionados—except the objects of their affection aren’t old Studebakers or Corvette convertibles but ‘62 Cadillac Royale side-loading funeral coaches and ‘41 Meteor hearses with carved Gothic side panels. Plus, they tend to have more facial piercings than the average member of the Antique Automobile Club of America.
Indeed, in recent years, a schism has developed between those collectors (often members of the funeral industry) who take their hobby very seriously and believe that hearse owners should comport themselves with a befitting dignity and the growing ranks of (often heavily tattooed and leather-clad) individuals who like to tool around in funeral vehicles for the sheer transgressive fun of it. The latter are likely to outfit their rides with ghoulish vanity plates (DST 2 DST, YOU NEXT, etc.), keep a coffin in the rear compartment, and, on special occasions, drive around with a life-size skeleton in the passenger seat.
One of the better-known hearse clubs is Grim Rides. Founded by Amy “the Hearse Queen” Shanafelt of Sunnyvale, California, Grim Rides is a group of self-described “funeral car fiends” who “get together once in a blue moon to hang out and talk hearses.” The club also maintains an impressive website that features classified ads, a nationwide directory of hearse clubs, a catalogue of funeral-related toys and model kits, a bookstore, and a truly mind-boggling filmography of every movie in which a hearse appears, however fleetingly (including The Muppet Movie, The Brave Little Toaster, and That Darn Cat!). You can also view the photo gallery of hot babes posed beside (or atop) vintage hearses and visit the online store to order Grim Rides T-shirts. Check it all out at: http://members.aol.com/hearseq/grimrides.htm. Other hearse club websites worth visiting are:
The Whole Death Catalog Page 17