Bodies and ceremonies: is the UK funeral industry still fit for purpose?

Abstract

Funerals may be defined as the ritual or ceremonial disposal of a body; the two essential components are therefore a body and a ceremony/ritual. The UK funeral industry’s structure revolves around those who manage the body rather than the ceremony. This structure, in which the client contracts with a funeral director who subcontracts the funeral ceremony to a priest or celebrant, was fit for purpose in the nineteenth century when most of the family’s choices concerned hardware (coffins, carriages, horses, etc.) for the body’s containment and transport. It may no longer be fit, however, in the twenty-first century when, for many families, the major choices concern how to personalise the ceremony. In theory, it might therefore now be more appropriate for at least some families first to contract with a celebrant, who would then subcontract the body’s care, storage and transport, reversing who is contractor and who is subcontractor. In practice, factors on both the demand and supply side keep the industry’s present structure in place. Though the past 25 years have seen much innovation, conservative innovations such as celebrancy and green burial that accept the industry’s existing structure have proved more successful than radical innovations that challenge it. Implications for funeral costs and funeral poverty are discussed.

Keywords:

• Funeral director
• celebrant
• funeral poverty
• cortege
• postmaterial
• secular

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Charles Cowling, Brian Parsons and John Valentine for helpful comments on an early draft. The article’s argument is, of course, entirely my responsibility.

Notes

1 Were the UK’s funeral rites dominated not by secularised Protestantism but by popular Catholicism, considerable hardware (shrines, mass cards, ex votos, etc.) would doubtless be available to aid the soul’s passage.

2 For an American analysis, see Bradfield and Myers (1980).

3 Thanks to John Valentine and Charles Cowling for these points.

4 Whether all families welcome so much choice is touched on by Szmigin and Canning (2015).

5 http://www.heartandsoulfunerals.co.uk/

6 http://www.arkafunerals.co.uk/

7 http://stneotsfuneraldirectors.co.uk/

8 http://www.evelynsfunerals.co.uk

9 http://www.poppysfunerals.co.uk/services/a-to-b/

10 http://stneotsfuneraldirectors.co.uk/funeral-costs/a-no-funeral-funeral-for-1477-inclusive/

11 http://www.bettersendoff.co.nz/funeral-costs-nz

12 On this, see http://www.goodfuneralguide.co.uk/category/direct-cremation/

13 http://communityfunerals.org.uk/the-darley-dale-cfs/

14 Honouring Michael’s Last Wishes: http://www.greenfieldcoffins.co.uk/about-us/latest-news/item/77-honouring-michael-s-last-wishes

15 The Scottish Working Group on Funeral Poverty detected in 2015 a ‘developing belief’ in ‘a connection between the complexity and cost of a funeral and … respect and love for the deceased’. http://data.parliament.uk/WrittenEvidence/CommitteeEvidence.svc/EvidenceDocument/Work%20and%20Pensions/Bereavement%20benefits/written/26543.html Section 4.1.2.