Amazing Medical Stories by George Burden

Author:George Burden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO017000, MED039000
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
Published: 2003-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

Dorothy Grant

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The table on which Titanic victim John Jacob Astor was embalmed, now in the collection of the East Hants Historical Museum in Selma, Nova Scotia. GEORGE BURDEN

A DREADFUL TASK

THE UNDERTAKERS AND THETITANIC DISASTER

A chilling announcement appeared in The Acadian Recorder, a Halifax newspaper, on April 27, 1912. It stated: “John Snow & Sons have made arrangements whereby all the bodies arriving on Monday aboard the MacKay-Bennett will be embalmed by them and their staff, assisted by nearly every embalmer in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. The Funeral Directors Association of the Maritime Provinces allow only experienced men and embalmers to become members, and about forty of these members are either in Halifax or on their way there.”

In fact, about forty-three undertakers answered the call, and only when they arrived in Halifax would they have begun to comprehend the horrendous task they faced. Even for the most experienced, it must have been heartbreaking to face the devastating task of embalming the many victims of the Titanic catastrophe.

In keeping with the male-dominated business world of the time, only two women were included in the group. They were Mrs. Elizabeth Walsh and her sister, Annie O’Neil, from Saint John, New Brunswick, who were considered to be the most appropriate individuals to assume the sensitive responsibility of embalming women’s bodies. Mrs. Walsh apparently also embalmed the body of a baby that was among the first to be taken from the sea and the only child that remained unclaimed.

The White Star Line that owned the Titanic had arranged to obtain hundreds of caskets from manufacturers all over the Eastern provinces, and Snow & Sons had contacted a coffin company requesting that its staff work night and day to supply a large number of its product. As the coffins arrived in the city, many were taken to the wharves that have nuzzled the edges of Halifax’s magnificent harbour for hundreds of years. It was not the first time such grim reminders of death rested on the docks, but never had there been so many destined to become final shelters for bodies recovered from the frigid waters of the Atlantic.

The White Star Line had chartered several vessels to search for victims of the disaster. One of them, the cable ship MacKay-Bennett, recovered many bodies found floating in an area that extended over several kilometres surrounding the location where the majestic ship had gone down. In a strange twist of fate, the crew encountered bodies floating together in large numbers. They described the scene as being strangely reminiscent “of witnessing a flock of seagulls in the fog.” But unlike seagulls whose liberating wings enable the birds to free themselves from the grasp of a greedy ocean, these were the ship’s dead, whose life jackets had kept their doomed bodies rising and falling for several days at the mercy of the waves.

Accompanying the crew on their disheartening recovery mission was “a leading local undertaker, John Snow of Snow & Co.” With stoic pragmatism, he had made sure the indispensable accoutrements of his trade had come with him.

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