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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
You though most curious in other things, will hardly be perswaded to touch any thing that smells of the Coffin or of Embalming.“ ”The Haters of Funerals“ to whom John Dunton addressed these words in 16821 would seem to include scholars, for the beginnings of the modern trade of funeral undertaking have never been investigated. This paper attempts to fill in some measure this gap in social history, and as a corollary to explain the novelty, timeliness, justice, and development of Steele's satire on undertakers in The Funeral and The Taller.
1 The House of Weeping; or, Mans Last Progress to His Long Home (London), pt. ii, p. 95. Hereafter if no place of publication is specified, London is to be understood.
2 A Funeral Sermon Occasioned by the Death of the Lady Lane … and of John Lane, Esq., p. 12.
3 Samuel Lee, Contemplations on Mortality (Boston, Mass., 1698), pp. 48–49.
4 See B. P. Kurtz, “Gifer the Worm; an Essay toward the History of an Idea”, Univ. of California Publ. in English, II (1929), no. 2, 235–261.
6 Anon., Saint Austins Care for the Dead; or, His Book De Curd pro Mortuis. Translated into English, 2nd ed. (1651), p. 16.
6 Edward Dent, Everlasting Blessedness. A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of… Mr. William Baker (1692), p. 20.
7 [Thomas Pierce,] Death Consider'd as a Door to a Life of Glory [ca. 1690], p. 89.
8 Ralph Brownrig, Sixty Five Sermons (1674), II, 210. This regard for the dead body may have been furthered by opposition to Locke's view that personal identity rests purely in consciousness. Thomas Beconsall in answering Locke stated that personal identity consists “in the Identity of the animal, as well as immaterial Part, whereinsoever that happens to consist…” The Doctrine of a General Resurrection (Oxford, 1697), p. 17.
9 Dunton, op. cit., pt. ii, p. 30.
10 E.g., John Knight, A Sermon Preach'd at the Funeral of the… Lady Guilford, Nov. 18. 1699 (1700), pp. 27–28.
11 Richard Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, Everyman ed., II, 403.
12 John Pearson, An Exposition of the Creed, 12th ed. (1741), p. 223.
13 Information on this subject came largely at first from George Sandys, A Relation of a Iourney Begun An: Dont: 1610,3d ed. (1627), p. 134: both John Weever—Ancient Funerall Monuments (1631), pp. 5 ff.—and Dugdale—History of St. Pauls Cathedral (1658), p. 44—cite Sandys as their authority on the subject. Later appeared fuller accounts by John Greaves—Pyramidographia; or, A Description of the Pyramids in Ægypt (1646), pp. 43–65—and John Ogilby—Africa (1670), pp. 84–93. Popular interest at the end of the century in Egyptian and other early burial customs is exemplified in a series of articles in John Houghton's A Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade, vol. xin, nos. 325–335 (Oct. 14-Dec. 23, 1698).
14 Thomas Burnet, Of the State of the Dead, and of Those That Are to Rise, tr. Matthias Earbery, 2nd ed. (1728), 1,31.
15 T??o??o: The House of Mourning, 3d ed. (1672), p. 520. This apparent refusal of the Church to commit itself in the matter of embalmment is all the more remarkable in the presence of (to quote Isaac Watts) the “warm dispute among men of learning, and particularly between Mr. Locke and Bishop Stillingfleet, whether the same individual body which is buried shall be raised at the resurrection of the dead”—“The Resurrection of the Same Body”, Works (1810), v, 576. Yet no preacher seems to have gone further than Thomas Lye, who wrote : “See how Death it self is even embalm'd, and clothd in such soft, and silken Language, that It carries even A sweetness, and beauty in it. 'Tis A sleep, no more than A sleep”—Death the Sweetest Sleep; or, A Sermon Preach't on the Funeral of Mr. William Hiett (1681), p. 17.
16 Anon., “The Explanation of the Frontispiece”, Greenhill, op. cit., sig. [av].
17 As is indicated in many entries in the many reports of the Historical MSS Commission.
18 A new charter granted the barber-surgeons in 1604 stated that embalming belonged to “the science of Barbery and Surgery” and was not to be “intruded into by Butchers Taylors Smythes Chaundlors and others of macanicall trades unskillfull in Barbery or Surgery, And unseemely and unchristian lyke defaceinge disfiguringe and dismembringe the dead Corpses…” (Sidney Young, The Annals of the Barber-Surgeons of London [1890], p. 112). That the operation was at best poorly done is seen in the fact that in 1618 the body of the Bishop of Winchester had to be embalmed twice—Evelyn P. Shirley, “The Will, Inventories, and Funeral Expenses of James Montagu, Bishop of Winchester, Anno 1618”, Archaeologia, XLJV (1877), ii, 396—as well as in the custom of placing an effigy of the deceased on the coffin.
19 Young, op. cit., p. 218.
20 Christopher Merrelt, A Short View of the Frauds, and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries, 2nd ed. (1670), p. 72.
21 That was the cost of “imballming the Lady Roos” in 1674: Hist. MSS Comm., The MSS of the Duke of Rutland, iv (1905), 551. In 1679 an apothecary was paid 38 “for embalminge my Lord, and fisyeck” (ibid., p. 554).
22 In 1786 Richard Gough wrote: “Embowelling of eminent persons was in fashion at the end of the last century…” (Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain, ii, xc). The distinction that accompanied it is proved by this statement in The London Gazette for July 16, 1666 (no. 70) : “This day arrived a Trumpet from the States of Holland,… with a Letter to His Majesty, that the States have taken order for the Embalming the Body of Sir William Berkley, which they have placed in the Chappel of the great Church at the Hague; a civility they profess to ow to his Corps, in respect of the Quality of his Person, the Greatness of his Command, and of the high Courage and Valor he shewed in the late Engagement; desiring His Majesty to signifie His pleasure about the further disposal of it.”
23 The Roman pollinctores (embalmers), occasionally referred to by Jeremy Taylor and others, received extended notice in Basil Kennett's Rom Antigua Notifia; or, The Antiquities of Rome (1696 and many later editions) and in Greenhill's Art of Embalming.
24 Jeremy Taylor, Funeral Sermon for Lady Carbery (1650), extract in The Golden Grove, Selected Passages from the. Sermons and Writings, ed. Logan P. Smith (Clarendon Press, 1930), p. 251.
25 J. Charles Cox, English Church Fittings, Furniture and Accessories (1923), p. 303.
26 Idem, The Parish Registers of England (1910), p. 121. In some places chests to serve as coffins were rented by chest^makers: Charles C. Hodges, “On Some Medieval Carved Chests”, Archaeologia Aeliana, new ser., xv (1892), 298.
27 E.g., in 1677 Sir Simon Degge listed “Grave-stones, Winding-sheets, Coats of Arms, Penons”, etc., as the property of the executors of the deceased but failed to mention coffins (The Parsings Counsellor, p. 183). In the same year B. Riveley named only grave and shroud as possessions of the dead man of wealth (A Sermon Preach'd in the Cathedral Church of Norwich, at the Funeral of… Edward Lord Bishop of Norwich, p. 11). In 1724 Thomas Hearne wrote: “Formerly it was usual to be buried in winding-sheets without coffins, and the bodies were laid on biers. And this custom was practised about three score years agoe, tho' even then persons of rank were buried in coffins, unless they ordered otherwise”—Remains, ed. Philip Bliss, 2nd ed. (1869), n, 199. And Dr. Charles Creighton has stated that coffin burial, by delaying decomposition, may have assisted in finally extinguishing the plague: A History of Epidemics in Britain (Cambridge, 1894), ii, 35–39.
28 E.g., by John Dunton, op. cit., pt. i, p. 77.
29 William Andrews, Old Church Life (1900), p. 104. In 1701 a knight was buried without coffin at his own desire; the fact was considered extraordinary. He died at 88 and was doubtless old-fashioned in his views. N Q, 1st ser., xII (1855), 380.
80 At Melbourne, Derbyshire, “in 1698 only one burial in a coffin is named out of seventeen funerals, and none in 1699 out of ten… In 1718 there were only two uncoffined burials out of eight”—Sir Arnold Wilson and Hermann Levy, Burial Reform and Funeral Costs (Oxford Univ. Press, 1938), p. 81. At Stockton-on-Tees uncoffined burials for the poor were the rule as late as 1715 (Andrews, op. cit., p. 108).
31 A Discourse of Death, Bodily, Ghostly, and Eternall, pp. 83–87.
32 Meditations concerning Death, pp. 88–89.
33 A Funeral Handkerchief, in Two Parts, pt. i, p. 169.
34 The Mourners Directory, pp. 83, 126.
35 William Bates, The Four Last Things… Practically Considered and Applyed. In Several Discourses, 2nd ed. (1691), p. 34.
36 Thomas Cheesman, Death Compared to a Sleep, in a Sermon Preachl upon the Occasion of the Funeral of Mrs. Mary Allen (1695), p. 3.
37 [Richard Allestree,] The Whole Duty of Mourning, and the Great Concern of Preparing Our Selves for Death, Practically Considered (1695), p. 8.
38 Op. cit., p. 76.
39 Death Made Comfortable; or, The Way to Dye Well, p. 69.
40 Op. cit., pp. 401–403.
41 A Companion to the Temple and Closet, 2nd ed. (1679), IV, 473–474.
42 Judicious Hooker's Illustrations of Holy Scripture in His Ecclesiastical Policy (1675), p. 43.
43 Op. cit., p. 27.
44 A Sermon Preach'd at the Funeral of… William Duke of Devonshire, p. 2.
45 Op. cit., pt. ii, pp. 289, 296.
46 E.g., the account of Lady Brownlow's funeral procession, “a most Noble, Glorious, and Costly Cavalcade”, in The London Post toi Jan .22,1700 N.S. (no. 98).
47 Hist. MSS Comm., Calendar of the MSS of the… Marquis of Salisbury, pt. iv (1892), pp. 459–460.
48 Hist. MSS Comm., Fifteenth Report, App., pt. ii (1897), p. 300.
49 Joseph Edmondson, A Complete Body of Heraldry (1780), I, sig. [qqqq2]. See also sig. qqqq.
50 Much of the history of the dispute may be found in W. A. D. Englefield, The History of the Painter-Stainers Company of London (1923), pp. 153–167.
51 Hist. MSS Comm., Eleventh Report, App., pt. vii (1888), p. 42.
52 Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs (Oxford, 1857), iv, 21.
53 And had been for decades, e.g., Sylvanus Morgan's The Sphere of Gentry (1661).
54 The London Gazette, May 7, 1677 (no. 1196).
55 John Houghton, A Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade, vol. vi, no. 138 (Mar. 22, 1695 N.S.).
56 [L. Meriton,] “On the Arms Painters”, Pecuniae Obediunt Omnia. Money Does Master All Things, a Poem (York, 1696), p. 44.
57 E.g., by Houghton, op. cit., vol. x, no. 217 (Sept. 25,1696).
58 Two attempts are recorded respectively in The Post Boy, Sept. 30, 1699 (no. 699) and The Flying Post, Nov. 25, 1699 (no. 709).
59 See The Case of the Corporation of the Kings, Heralds and Pursuivants of Arms; upon Their Claim to Certain Fees and Droits, for Their Service at the Funerals of the Royal Family, and Others, Where They Attend [1709].
60 Englefield, op. cit. pp. 163–167.
61 See C. H. Hunter Blair, “Local Armorials of the Eighteenth Century”, Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th ser., xII (1936), 9–10.
62 John C. Gebhart, Funeral Costs (New York and London, 1928), p. 16.
63 “The Mournfull Subjects” (1685), Roxburghe Ballads (1885), v, 527.
64 The best account I know of guild burial customs is (anon.) “The Guilds of Lynn Regis”, The Norfolk Antiquarian Miscellany (Norwich), I (1877), 161.
65 Charles Pendrill, Old Parish Life in London (Oxford Univ. Press, 1937), p. 270.
66 Edward Peacock, “On the Churchwardens' Accounts of the Parish of Stratton,… Cornwall”, Archaeologia, XLVI, i (1880), 197.
67 H. W. Lewer and J. C. Wall in The Essex Review (Colchester), xxi (1912), 232.
68 Hist. MSS Comm., The MSS of the Duke of Rutland, Iv (1905), 531.
69 E. A. B. Barnard, A Seventeenth Century Country Gentleman (Cambridge: Heffer, 1944), pp. 78–83. In Memoires et observations faites par un voyageur en Angleterre (La Haye, 1698), p. 144, Henri Misson reports a trick played in 1691 on a London baker who was inveigled into paying the funeral expenses of a stranger; on the discovery of the fraud, “tous les Marchands & Artisans qui avoient fourni quelque chose, eurent pitié de lui, & reprirent, non toutefois sans quelque perte pour le Boulanger, ce qu'ils avoient avancé.” Further indication of this inconvenient non-centralization of things mortuary is present in The London Gazette in advertisements of “decent and fashionable laced Shifts and Dressings for the Dead” (Aug. 15,1678, no. 1329), a “Mourning Chariot” (Sept. 8, 1687, no. 2275), and the like.
70 There may have been an occasional instance of a tradesman aiding mourners to the extent of supplying more than one commodity or service. Thus Henry Machyn, a sixteenth century merchant-tailor of London, furnished heraldic equipment and lights in addition to goods more peculiar to his trade. Unquestionably he had much to do with funerals, but precisely what, it seems impossible to say. See John Gough Nichols, The Diary of Henry Machyn, Camden Soc. (1848), pp. ix, xi, 370.
71 Some sort of family connection between Russell and the Painter-Stainers Company is suggested by the presence in its rolls of a William Russell as Renter Warden in 1649, Upper Warden in 1654, and Master in 1659 (Englefield, op. cit., p. 223). Our man, who was obviously of a later generation, may perhaps be traced to the christening record of “William, s. of William & Sarah Russell, carpender in ye Back lene” dated July 30, 1651. Joseph L. Chester, The Parish Registers of St. Mary Aldermary (1880), p. 92.
72 Hist. MSS Comm., Report on the MSS of the Marquess of Doimshire, pt. i (1924), pp. 456–458.
73 Hist. MSS Comm., Report on the MSS of the Earl of Verulam (1906), p. 87.
74 Edmond Malone, The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works of John Dryden (1800), I, 368.
75 Henry L. Phillips, Annals of the Worshipful Company of Joiners of the City of London (1915), pp. 49, 98.
76 The London Gazette, Aug. 30,1688 (no. 2377); Mar. 10,1690 N.S. (no. 2538); July 23, 1691 (no. 2681); April 28, 1692 (no. 2761); Aug. 4, 1692 (no. 2789); F. G. Hilton Price, “Signs of Old London”, London Topographical Record, iv (1907), 31–32.
77 Houghton, op. cit., vol. iii, no. 65 (Oct. 27,1693); vol. v, no. 119 (Nov. 9,1694); vol. vii, no. 145 (May 10, 1695).
78 The Post Man, Mar. 26,1696 (no. 137).
79 The Post Boy, Aug. 18, 1696 (no. 200).
80 The Flying Post, Mar. 25,1699 (no. 604).
81 The London Post, July 22,1700 (no. 176); Oct. 2, 1700 (no. 207).
82 The Post Man, Mar. 19,1702 N.S. (no. 944).
83 Ibid., Mar. 26,1696 (no. 137).
84 The death notice of Thomas Speed in The Post Boy for Jan. 31,1699 N.S. (no. 595) calls him “a Gentleman eminently known.”
85 Russell's bill for Dryden's funeral totaled 45/17/0 (Malone, op. cit., I, 563).
86 Dawks's News-Letter for Jan. 17,1699 N.S. (no. 404) printed a story of two gentlemen at a funeral, one of whom gulled the other of a rented mourning cloak, but the joke is not directed at the undertaker. Incidentally, “undertaker” is used here in the specialized sense with complete casualness.
87 The date of the first performance cannot be ascertained, since from Oct. 21, 1701, to Jan. 24,1702, no records of dramatic performances of any kind are known. See E. L. Avery and A. H. Scouten, “A Tentative Calendar of Daily Theatrical Performances in London, 1700–1701 to 1704–1705”, PMLA, LXIII (Mar. 1948), 119. Allardyce Nicoll places it in Dec. 1701 (A History of Early Eighteenth Century Drama, 1700–1750 [Cambridge, 1925], p. 356). The first publication notice appeared on Dec. 20,1701, in The Post Boy (no. 1029) and The Plying Post (no. 1033).
88 Op. cit., p. 7.
89 Op. cit., pp. 44,91.
90 Richard Steele, ed. G. A. Aitken, Mermaid Ser. (London and New York, 1894), p. 6.
91 The popular pietist John Dunton had on occasion remarked this disproportion (e.g. in The Post-Boy Rob'd of His Mail [1692], pp. 216–217). And certain of the clergy had protested against the abuse of funeral panegyric, e.g., John Prude, A Sermon at the Funeral of the Learned and Ingenious Mrs. Ann Baynard (1697), p. 20; Philip Stubs, The Hopes of a Resurrection Asserted and Applied. In a Sermon Preached Decemb. 4.1700, at the Interment of Mr. Thomas Wright. Wherein Are Some Occasional Reflections on the Abuse of Funeral Sermons (1701).
92 Staring B. Wells, éd., A Comparison between the Two Stages (Princeton Univ. Press, 1942), p. 178. The second (1725) edition of Funeral Discipline bears on the title page a quotation from Steele's comedy. The pamphlet was first advertised in The Post Boy for Dec. 23, 1701, the number (1030) following that which had announced the publication of The Funeral.
93 Anon., The Lawyer Turn'd Butcher, and the Physician, Cook; or, Hungry Dogs Will Eat Dirty Pudding, p. 3.
94 Page 166.
95 Between 1701 and 1706 I have encountered only one, that of Edward Evans in The Post-Man of Aug. 17,1704 (no. 1308).
96 Col. Robert J. Blackham, The Soul of the City, London's Livery Companies (n.d.), p. 313.
97 Ibid., p. 312.
98 P. H. Ditchfield, The City Companies of London and Their Good Works (1904), p. 337.
99 W. Carew Hazlitt, The Livery Companies of the City of London (1892), p. 655.
100 See the NED, and NQ, 10th ser., iii (1905), 273. The various terms are used in The London Gazette with a bewildering range of meaning. This confusion persisted well into the century.
101 Hazlitt, op. cit., p. 654. The diversity of the upholders' occupations is indicated in the signs and notices collected by antiquarians like Price. Frequently undertaking was combined with some other business. Ned Ward described a gouger of the poor who dealt in bed, bolster, and coffin and called him both an “Upholdster” and an “Undertaking Parish Don”: The Parish Guttlers; or, The Humours of a Select Vestry (1722), pp. 37,44. Indeed, upholders appear to have been permitted to be members also of other companies, for of the 125 upholders named in The Lists of the Liveries of the Fifty Six Companies, in the City of London (1701), three were likewise skinners, four were drapers, two were tailors, and one was an embroiderer. Even today, Gebhart reports (op. cit., p. 214), “in the… smaller towns and villages all over the British Isles, undertaking is usually a side branch of other trades, such as builders, house furnishers, drapers, estate agents, etc.”
102 The Lists of the Liveries of the Fifty Six Companies.
103 Price, op. cit., p. 31.
104 A. C. Stanley-Stone, The Worshipful Company of Turners of London (1925), p. 74.
105 Metcalf is elsewhere styled, characteristically, “Upholsterer” (The London Post, Oct. 2,1700, no. 207) and “Upholder” (The Post Boy, Oct. 3,1700, no. 856).
106 In October 1700 the funeral of Sir Samuel Grimston was “performed by the Company of Upholsterers, over Exeter Exchange” with one Freeman in charge (Hist. MSS Comm., Report on the MSS of the Earl of Verulam [1906], pp. 112–113). The next record I have found is of 1707 (Price, p. 76).
107 The Taller, no. 162.
108 Hazlitt, op. cit., p. 655.
109 “R. B.”, pseud., Historical Remarks and Observations upon the Ancient and Present State of London and Westminster, 5th ed. (1703), p. 90.
110 The Review, Aug. 1,5,15,1704 (nos. 43,44,47). The satire was probably suggested by the scene (ii, ii) in The Funeral between Lord Brumpton and Sable.
111 Op. cit., pp. 177–179.