The Funeral: the Majagexent of Death A1) Its Rituals
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THE FUNERAL: THE MAJAGEXENT OF DEATH A1) ITS RITUALS IN A NORTHERN, INDUSTRIAL CITY MAURA J.A. NAYLOR SUBMITTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THE UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL POLICY & SOCIOLOGY JUNE 1989. (1) ABSTRACT This thesis explores the contemporary management of death in an urban setting. It provides a long overdue empirical re-appraisal of the way in which groups within society process the dead and continue to surround death with rituals. In particular, it addresses itself to a totally neglected area within British sociology, since the last major work, Geoffrey Gorer's Death Grief and Mourning in Contemporary Britain, appeared in 1965. Researcher presence a few hours after death had occurred and participant observation and interviews throughout the subsequent actions of the bereaved, funeral directors, clergy and others within the death system, illuminated the production of ritual from a number of different standpoints. This has thrown into relief, the ordinary 'common' or 'folk religious' understandings by which actors make sense of the trauma, as well as the official interests and constraints. There was substantial recourse to secondary data in occupational journals to cross check themes and inferences. The work takes account of the main theoretical perspectives within the literature which concentrate upon a perception of death as a 'taboo' subject, suggesting that modern society 'fears' or 'denies' it and that it has became 'dirty', 'medicalised' and 'invisible'. The thesis concludes that groups within the death system promulgate a number of differing orientations towards death so that it has been (ii) 'decontextualised' rather than denied and that there is 'ignorance' rather than 'fear'. There was an increasing trend towards the personalisation of ritual by the bereaved. This study contributes to the sociological understanding of funeral directors and clergy as occupational groups. It also goes beyond the narrowly economic critiques and surveys to reveal the nature of the relationships and work routines underlying the production of funeral ritual in the city. The information has important implications for decision makers within many areas of death and bereavement, particularly in the light of the recent Office of Fair Trading Survey (1989) which suggests that government intervention may be necessary within the Funeral Industry in order to achieve a better standard of service for the bereaved. (iii) Acknowledgements Xy grateful thanks are extended to Geof. Xercer for his support which encouraged me to continue with the thesis despite the difficulties of a demanding full time job and family commitments. I should like to thank Bob Towler for his early help, Dennis Warwick, and also the Economic and Social Science Research Council for the award of a Linked Studentship grant. (iv) CONTENTS Page Abstract I Acknowledgements iii Contents iv List of Diagra V Respondents' Key vi Chapter One: The British Way of Death, A Sociological Vacuum 1 Chapter Two: The Transformation of The Funeral 41 Chapter Three: The Contemporary Itanagement of Death: Part 1: The Death System in The City 104 Part 2: Funeral Organizations & Territories 123 Chapter Four: The- Production of Ritual: the Role of the Funeral Director 168 Chapter Five: The Bereaved and The Death System: Pre-disposal Rituals 233 Chapter Six: Disposal & Post Disposal Rituals 287 Chapter Seven: Concluding Discussion 345 Bibliography 372 (v) List of Diagrams Page 1. Death system Organization and Personnel 105 2. Death at Home (expected death) 106 3. Death at Home (Unexpected death) 107 4. Death at Home (uncertainty about the cause) 110 5a. Death in Hospital (expected) 112 5b. Death in Hospital (unexpected) 112 (vi) Respondents' Key Individual respondents are identified by disguised initials only. Individual funeral directors are abbreviated: F.Dir. Individual clergy are abbreviated; Cl. (For example: C/AN). Respondents interviewed during the preliminary study are differentiated by the use of /PS. (For example, Ta/PS.) The Four maiorFuneral Homes are abbreviated thus: The Centralised Funeral Home: CFH The Professional Funeral Home; PFH The Crossroads Funeral Home: Cross.FH The Commercial Funeral Home: Com.FH. Other Funeral Homes are referred to as follows: Small, Professional Funeral Home: S/PFH Small, Joinery Funeral Home: S/JFH (1) CHAPTER OWE : THE BRITISH WAY OF DEATH, A SOCIOLOGICAL VACUUM Death is central to society and touches upon nearly every area of sociology, yet an examination of British sociological literature will reveal almost no data on the subject. Study after study dismisses death in a single sentence or with a passing reference to the deathrate. Classic community studies such as Young and Vilmott's Famllyand Kinship in East London (1957) and Famil y and Class in a London Suburb (1960), discuss death only insofar as it provides a deathrate or performm an integrative function, bringing together relatives who were hardly seen at other times. Firth et al (1970) show some interest in British death ceremonies, but oniy narrowly in the context of the numbers of kin attending. Henriques, Slaughter and Dennis, in_Coal is our Life (1957) manage to ignore the impact and handling of death within a death-aware community. Studies of women, dealing with the specialisation of many domestic tasks, have documented the removal of birth from the home but have casually overlooked the removal of death. Oakley's widely referenced text Housewife (1974) failed to consider the gradual exclusion of women from their traditional roles as keepers of death lore and layers out of the dead. Rosser and Harris, In The Family and Social Chang (1974), examine marriage and Its effects upon roles and relationships but fail to examine the equally traumatic effects of death on the family. The status and situation of recently bereaved widows has attracted the attention of some psychologists such as Hinton (1971) but has been typically neglected by sociologists. (2) The sociology of Work and Occupations has similarly avoided close inspection of the continuing and frustrated attempts of funeral directors to obtain recognition as 'professionals'. The sociology of the Urban environment has ignored the whole of the milieu of death, its institutions and architecture. The sociology of Religion which might appear to provide death with a natural habitat, has examined the life cycle rituals of christening and marriage but glossed over British death rituals. For example, Wilson in Religion in Secular Society (1966), devotes several pages to christening and marriage but spares one paragraph for death. Throughout the whole of British sociology, one finds that the subject of death is always set aside. A wealth of data on a segment of human society has been largely ignored and with it, a major perspective on our cultural values. (To locate data of any substance, it is necessary to turn to scattered socio- historical sources, e.g. Roberts The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century (1973) and such sources will be utilised. for the material in Chapter Two of this thesis.) Several writers have commented upon the unusual British silence on death. Pickering (1974) regrets that 'virtually no sociological studies have been made about burials in contemporary Britain' (p. 68).Palgi and Abramovitch in their comparative study: Death: A. Cross Cultural Perspective (1984), were unable to locate a more up to date reference for British death rituals than Geoffrey Gorer's work - Death. Grief and Mourning in Contemporary Britain (1965). Pine (1969), searching for reliable British data quotes Habenstein and Lamers (1956) quoting Gorer (1955)! The research vacuum is all the more puzzling to American sociologists (3) since their concern with the sociology of Death was partly founded upon Gorer's seminal essay 'The Pornography of Death (1955). Prior to this date, any examination of death (excepting suicide, Durkheim 1897), remained the province of anthropologists and psychiatrists. Xartins (1983) writing in the introduction to a series of Portugese studies on death comments at length on the fact that there have been '...no substantial British studies' since Gorer and points out that the topic '...gets barely a mention in (that country's) considerable scholarly output.' (p.vi) Whatever the reasons for the neglect, one consequence is that our most widely referenced British sources, apart from Gorer, are contemporary satirists such as laugh and journalists such as Kitford. laugh in 'The Loved One' (1948) wrote a fictional account of work in an American Funeral Home, which is much cited, and ](itford, in Ih American Wa y of Death (1963) added a chapter on British funeral customs based on one visit to one London funeral establishment. The continual citing of laugh and Mitford in the literature, by both British and American sociologists desperate for British data, is in itself revealing. A further consequence is that an alarming amount of misinformation on the British management of death remains in circulation. Thus Dumont and Foss (1972) quote Mitford, that '....display of the corpse is stigmatised by most Britains as being reprehensible' (p.69), a statement entirely without reliable foundation. Similarly Pine (1969) again basing himself on Mitford, asserts that 'The English tend not to view the dead body' (p.49). Yet a survey carried out by the National Association of Funeral Directors (1967) and. Field (1981) (4) found that 64 -80% of the bereaved 'view' their deceased relatives on funeral establishment premises alone, beyond any viewing within the home or the hospital. (1)1 Palgi and Abramovitch (1984) claim that Britain in the 1980's is suffering from 'a gradual disappearance of formal ritual. expressing the breakdown of communities and the mediation of status by the state rather than by kith and kin' (p.412). This conclusion is again based upon Gorer's 1960's work, as is 1!artins (1983) comment that British death rituals represent 'an extreme case' (p.vi). So many questionable assertions, based on one study, now a quarter of a century old, are patently long overdue for re-examination.