American Afterlife by Sweeney Kate

Author:Sweeney, Kate
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2014-08-13T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

The House Where Death Lives

REVEALED:

How morticians became funeral directors, and Don Wilkerson’s Life in Death

In the waning days of the nineteenth century, the funeral home was a brand-new American business, as novel as the motion-picture camera, cotton candy, and the steel-framed skyscraper and as eager to establish itself to an inquisitive public. The undertaker had been around for a while, but the funeral director—who knew how to embalm and who took care of all the concerns one associated with funerals under one roof—was new. Pages from town directories from at least as early as the 1700s list the profession “Layer Out of Bodies.” It was a job often held by women who also worked as midwives. Until the very end of the 1800s, and even later in rural areas and much of the South, no one person took care of all the roles we associate with a funeral director. Instead, the operation was carried out piecemeal. Under the orders of physicians making home calls, families would first oversee the business of dying itself, from bleeding the sick to closing the eyes of the dead and tying the jaw shut with muslin.

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