DEATH CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Abstract

Obituary publication has experienced a remarkable revival in the British press during the past 20 years. Newspapers of quality now allocate generous column space on a daily basis, establishing the modern obituary as a literary phenomenon of appreciable magnitude. This shared enthusiasm, however, enjoys a varied manifestation on the pages themselves. That combined surge in column inches, and the consequent influence on public opinion by posthumous appraisal, has been accompanied by scholarly research into obituary publishing. Until now, however, quantitative studies of contemporary practice within the British press have been limited in scope. This article addresses that omission. Drawing on findings from the first large-scale study of its type, it examines 1183 obituaries published by the “quality quartet” (Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Independent) over a three-month period (1 March to 31 May 2007), combined with interviews with obituary editors and writers, to determine: style and presentation factors; subject selection by gender and demographic description; the dominant form of reference applied in naming each obituary's central character; contemporaneousness of publication; and the extent to which cause of death is included in the text. In analysing the technique applied by each of these four newspapers, this study reports the policies of their obituary editors, discusses the forces which shape contemporary practice, and creates a platform for further scholarship within the immediate field.

Keywords:

• death reporting
• editorial practice
• instant biography
• newspaper style
• obituary

Ripe for Research

Obituary pages, according to a New York Times anthology (Baker, 1997, p. v), should serve as “Stimulants to … discovery of life's astonishing richness, variety, comedy, sadness, of the diverse infinitude of human imaginations it takes to make this world.” This process of discovery was itself stimulated by the Fleet Street diaspora of the 1980s, when the British quality press experienced a physical transformation. There was a need to fill the gift of increased space with literate composition; obituaries—as instant biography demanding a generous measure of narrative—suited such a cause. In the 20 years since, the four major practitioners of obituary publication have all displayed a progressive increase in column inches. The Times now devotes at least two pages a day, and sometimes three, to the obituary art within its Register section; the Guardian and Independent flourish double-page spreads, handsomely illustrated, in their Monday-to-Friday editions with a further page apiece on Saturdays; and the Daily Telegraph's allocation frequently runs to five broadsheet columns.

The obituary has been a topic of considerable research and report since the 1970s. This activity was initially inspired by the development, as an academic discipline, of media studies—particularly that element which concerns itself with gender questions. Those early research initiatives, confined to the United States, analysed newspaper obituaries as a means of determining if posthumous sex discrimination existed in the mainstream press. They established that males, as obituary subjects, significantly outnumbered females.

A broader field of enquiry was then cultivated, linking obituary content and expression to issues of cultural identity. In the public forum, the post-1986 revival of the obituary created widespread reaction. Journals of quality in the popular press, such as the Economist and Time, have discussed this phenomenon. Writers of fiction have even drawn on obituarists for plot in novel, short story, theatre and cinema; a celebrated example of recent vintage was the film Closer (Sony Pictures, 2004), in which Jude Law portrayed a British obituary writer. Newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic have, in recent years, produced obituary anthologies too. Acknowledging their healthy sales, the Observer (2002) argued that the obituaries desk had become “if not quite the sexiest part of the newspaper … certainly the coolest”.

From a more scholarly perspective, the most ambitious study has been Ball and Jonnes's Fame at Last (2000), an analysis of New York Times obituaries. Their substantial sample (9325 obituaries in six years) was used to determine occupation and education of the selected subjects, sex and age, length of obituary, and the recording of cause of death. Racial emphases on obituary pages have been subjected to scholarly consideration too, notably by Hume in Obituaries in American Culture (2000). She noted (2000, p. 134) that the few 19th-century obituaries which did commemorate Native Americans “were included only to illustrate … [their] subjection” and that “by the early twentieth century, when illustrating this subjection was no longer necessary, Native Americans were all but absent from the obituary pages”.

Other studies, each with the obituary at its core, have been of particular value in establishing the newspaper obituary as a legitimate instrument of history. Pursuing this notion in a contemporary context, Hume (2003) pointed to the enduring impact of the New York Times obituary series “Portraits of Grief”, published in response to the terrorist attacks of September 2001.

In the context of British newspapers, Bytheway and Johnson (1996) examined “images of the life course” conveyed within 86 Guardian obituaries. Bullamore (2005) considered questions of ethical conduct in the Times “London Lives” series dedicated to victims of the London Transport bombings, and later (Bullamore, 2007) discussed authorial sentiment in obituary writing. Fowler's (2007) work on the theme of collective memory researched trends in subject selection over a 100-year period. From a sample of 883 obituaries (printed by four British newspapers, one French, and one American in that century), it concluded (2007, p. 4) “Western obituaries continue to be oriented particularly to the dominant discourses … elites, a Eurocentric location and to masculine achievement”.

As a means of extending the pattern of vigorous obituary scholarship, therefore, the mood appears ripe for a concerted investigation into core questions of contemporary technique as applied by the quality press in Britain. This study supplies answers in a comparison of quantitative data and through qualitative reflections drawn from textual content and from interviews with editors. In so doing, it provides a base for further research into prevailing obituary practice.

Pages of Contrast: in Number, Style, and Design

The Times

As Table 1 indicates, the Times—by a regular allocation of two, and sometimes three, pages a day—published the greatest number of obituaries in the survey period: 307. In addition, it printed 99 posthumous accounts within its Lives in Brief series.1 Leaving aside those vignettes as a separate editorial exercise, Times practice requires that its mainstream obituaries contain these features:

• Name of the subject as the major headline, with a subsidiary headline offering a character summary. In the instance of a military subject, for example, the Times led its Register section of 22 May 2007 this way:

  • Anthony Brooks.

  • Resourceful SOE agent whose sabotage operations hamstrung German army movements in the Midi (Times, 2007c).

• Bold photographic illustration. It is frequently the case that an image of the subject in youth is preferred, if this suits the emphasis of the narrative. This occurred in the Anthony Brooks obituary, as two-thirds of the storyline concentrated on his wartime exploits.

• A single-column end-piece, generally of four or five lines only, with name, post-nominal listing of military and civil honours, demographic description, date of birth, date of death, and age at death. Occasionally, the end-piece will also supply a cause of death.

• Anonymous authorship. This has been a constant characteristic of Times obituaries, with the exception of some personal tributes to officers who died on active service during World War II.

TABLE 1. Male/female subject incidence

	Number			Percentage
	Male	Female	Total	Male	Female
Times	266	41	307	87	13
Independent	228	39	267	85	15
Daily Telegraph	155	28	183	85	15
Guardian	195	47	242	81	19
Lives in Brief (Times)	81	18	99	82	18
Other Lives (Guardian)	52	33	85	61	39

The end-piece, with its summary of the life's milestones, confers on the unheralded writer the ability to construct a creative introduction. As for the faceless factor itself, the obituaries editor at the Times, Ian Brunskill, has argued that this absence of a by-line contributes to objectivity in appraisal and practicality in delivery:

An unsigned piece is much more likely to be read—and written—as an account of the subject's life, and not of his relations with the author. There are practical merits too. Times notices may be elaborate composites, updated over many years, sometimes by more than one hand. The obituary of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, for instance, would have needed half a dozen by-lines, some of them for writers who had predeceased their subject by several years. (2005, p. xii)

The Lives in Brief feature enables the Times to maintain a formal acknowledgment of life stories that, according to the chief obituaries writer, Peter Davies,2 are of “interest to a niche audience rather than the general readership”. That niche quality is apparent in the paper's preference for summarising such existences in fewer than 100 words. It was noticeable, in the three months under review, that these posthumous briefs are sometimes presented in sets. On 21 June, for example, a trio of old rugby league players was recognised; on 5 May, the Lives in Brief curtain had been lowered on six theatrical identities of modest fame.

The Daily Telegraph

With longer columns than those of the tabloid Times but restricted to a defined section of a single broadsheet page which also carries advertising, the Daily Telegraph published 183 obituaries between 1 March and 31 May 2007. Its standard practice demonstrates:

• A subject name/demographic description headline construction, as in the edition of 19 May 2007:

  • Stanley Holden.

  • Dancer who came to classical ballet via tap-dancing and made the roles of Widow Simone and Dr Coppelia his own (Daily Telegraph, 2007b).

• Photographic preference for images which depict subjects in their prime; the Stanley Holden obituary carried an old illustration of his Widow Simone performance.

• A standardised opening paragraph, rather than an end-piece summary. It comprises name, report of death, age at death, and storyline summary, in this fashion: “Stanley Holden, who died at Thousand Oaks, California, on May 11 aged 79, once hoped to be a music hall tap-dancer but rose instead to become the leading character dancer at the Royal Ballet” (Daily Telegraph, 2007b).

• In company with the Times, an unshakeable commitment to anonymous authorship.

The Telegraph obituaries editor, Andrew McKie,3 finds the unsigned obituary reassuring: “I prefer the Olympian and omniscient approach. The obituaries editor sees everything; he knows all”. Mirroring Times practice, therefore, his page attempts to convey the newspaper's considered appraisal of a life lived rather than printing the declared view of an individual writer. McKie's one regret is that the Telegraph is unable to do this as often as its like-minded competitor:

The Times has a fluctuating number of pages. If you look at this morning's, for example, I have two people in the paper and they have six. They run [their columns] justified and actually have a smaller typeface. They also run pictures smaller, and sometimes run without pictures. Their obituaries are a comparable length to ours but they're getting at least two more every day. What I'd really like is to do is lose the display advertising and have the whole page. But, of course, the display ad brings in the money.

The Guardian

Of the “quality quartet” at the time of the 1980s obituary transformation, the Guardian appeared initially to be the least enthusiastic. While the others dedicated substantial space to obituaries from 1986, the Guardian waited until 1990. Today, however, its commitment is demonstrable in both word and image. It published 242 obituaries in the survey period; another 85 appeared as Other Lives.

There is repeated evidence, in assessing this newspaper's performance, that it exerts the strongest visual impact of the four publications under review. Contemporary Guardian obituaries treatment involves a two-page spread with:

• A subject name/demographic description headline construction, accompanied by generous white space, as occurred on 5 March 2007:

  • Julia Casterton

  • Poet, reviewer, writer and teacher at the City Lit in London (Wandor, 2007).

• Dramatic photographic selection, often in colour and not necessarily limited to a facial image of the subject; obituaries of artists, in particular, are illustrated by bold representations of their work.

• A brief italicised end-piece encompassing the subject's name, demographic description, date of birth, and date of death.

• Statement of age at death, at an early juncture within the main text.

• Author end-credit.

That passion for visual appeal has emerged from the Guardian's shift, in 2005, to Berliner format: a blend, in dimension and design, of broadsheet and tabloid characteristics. Robert White,4 the obituaries editor, has found that a consequent ability to produce colour images on any page is “mostly greatly liberating, occasionally a bit of a challenge, and an opportunity to achieve a magazine quality on a daily basis”. He concedes that obituaries are sometimes delayed until “the right design aspect comes together”. White vigorously defends the practice of identifying his obituarists by name: “It's more responsible. An unsigned piece can be put together from all sorts of sources. It sometimes reads like that, a sort of patchwork”.

The Independent

The founding obituaries editor of the Independent, James Fergusson, is acknowledged as having reshaped obituary illustration. Before his page's debut, in October 1986, a conventional “mug shot” was considered enough. Fergusson changed all that, exploring library holdings for more creative images of his subjects in life. That policy has since been adopted elsewhere; obituary columns in Toronto, Los Angeles, and Sydney, as well as in London, now place an emphasis on picture as well as on word. However, the Independent itself in more recent times has practised photographic restraint; the pictorial aspect of its obituary sections was noticeably the least liberal of the newspapers considered in this study. Fergusson is also noted for introducing, and maintaining, a practice of identifying his writers. The Independent published 267 examples of their work between 1 March and 31 May 2007, the second highest obituary total of the quartet under review. This strong output reflects the newspaper's greater concern, today, for biography rather than photography. Prevailing page design is characterised by:

• A subject name/demographic description headline construction. This avoids the intrusion of any emotional element within the headline, a factor encountered—often to the detriment of the obituary page's standing—in North American and Australian newspapers. The Independent prefers to avoid sentiment in its obituary headlines, as this clinical rendition of 4 May 2007 suggests:

  • Sir Brian Smedley

  • Judge in the Matrix Churchill Case (Morton, 2007).

• A comparatively restrained photographic treatment.

• A lengthy biographical summary presented as an italicised end-piece; in one of the more extreme examples of this practice, the obituary of Sir Gareth Roberts, a physicist (Duff, 2007), carried an end-piece of 31 lines. Such detailed curriculum vitae construction does place some strain upon the reader in calculating the subject's age at death, as the Independent ignores this factor within the text of its obituaries.

• Author end-credit.

James Fergusson, after more than 20 years as editor, retired in April 2007 (at a mid-point of this study's data collection period). His immediate successor, Diana Gower, has maintained that the signed obituary can generate a healthy exchange of published opinion:

I worked with Jamie for many years, and it's inevitable that I would absorb some of his ways of doing things. If something's been said in a signed piece, at least it's clearly acknowledged. If other people have a different point of view, it seems fair to allow a written response to appear on the page, as it would in any other area of the paper. The obituary is not necessarily the final story.5

Subject Selection: Gender Comparisons

Studies of obituary subject selection in the United States and Australia, over three decades, have identified a sustained pattern of bias towards males. Ball and Jonnes (2000), p. 21), in their large-scale study of the New York Times over six years in the 1990s, found that male subjects accounted for 83 per cent of the obituaries published in that time. More than 20 years earlier, Kastenbaum et al. (1977) had reported imbalance at both the New York Times (80 per cent male to 20 per cent female) and the Boston Globe (81 per cent to 19 per cent). A study by Moremen and Cradduck (1997) also demonstrated that males dominated the obituary columns: New York Times (88 per cent male to 12 per cent female); Los Angeles Times (81 per cent to 19 per cent); Miami Herald (76 per cent to 24 per cent); Chicago Tribune (71 per cent to 29 per cent). There were similar results from an analysis of Australian newspapers (Starck, 2004, p. 283), with the male subject incidence ranging from a low of 72 per cent (Sydney Morning Herald) to a high of 84 per cent (Australian).

The disparity in British selection practice appears even more pronounced, on the evidence of the March to May 2007 study. Table 1 presents the findings (with percentages rounded).

The highest female presence was found at the Guardian: 19 per cent in its main obituary section and at twice that incidence in Other Lives, an irregular though not infrequent obituaries page feature that solicits reader contributions. In the three-month survey period, the Guardian published 85 Other Lives, offering a departure from established obituary-page patterns in terms of their subjects’ gender and occupation. This initiative, according to the obituaries editor, Robert White, has provoked a positive readership reaction: “These pieces keep pouring in”. Nevertheless, there is some disquiet at the mild pejorative quality of the word “other”, particularly at a newspaper with an egalitarian agenda; for this reason, the title might undergo some massaging. A rival editor, the Telegraph's Andrew McKie, is particularly outspoken on the point: “What do they mean by Other Lives? Does this mean somebody they wouldn't normally give the time of day to, but they're going to inflict them on the readers anyway?”

The comparative dearth of suitably dead women for the main obituary columns is a question that has long challenged the editors. Though the legacy of history militates against gender equity, in that evidence of public achievement remains a critical selection criterion, a shift is apparent:

All I can say is that I actually try to see if I can include women on the page. They help the look and the balance, and they certainly provide better photographs than just another bloke in a chalk-striped suit. I have every confidence that in 20 or 30 years’ time there'll be so many women who've achieved prominent positions in society that it won't be a worry to my successors. (Andrew McKie)

Demographic Selection

In filling their columns, all four members of the “quality quartet” shared an enthusiasm for subjects from the performing arts (theatre and film, music and song, broadcasting). This category dominated each newspaper's top 10 demographic groupings. The Independent was notably ardent in this regard, with 76 (28 per cent) of its 267 obituaries from the entertainment industry. Scholarship (university research and administration), authorship, sport, and politics also received significant acknowledgement. Table 2 lists the Independent's leading subject selections by demographic descriptor, from the performing arts to medical science and civil service (in equal 10th place). Somewhat surprisingly, it out-rated the Times—a newspaper more closely associated with “establishment” values—in recording lives of distinction from the private enterprise sector.

TABLE 2. Demographic selection (leading categories)—The Independent

Performing arts	76
Scholarship	33
Authorship	24
Sport	22
Politics	21
Private enterprise	14
Fine arts	12
Communication media	10
Law	10
Medical science; civil service	8 (each)

Although show business subjects also led the Times list (Table 3), their incidence within the total of 307 obituaries was much lower there (16 per cent) than on the Independent's obituary pages. The private enterprise demographic group appeared on the bottom rung of the Times top 10 chart; identities from scholarship, the communication media, politics, and military life were twice as prominent.

TABLE 3. Demographic selection (leading categories)—The Times

Performing arts	49
Scholarship	27
Communication media	25
Politics	24
Military	23
Authorship	19
Medical science	15
Sport	15
Civil service	14
Private enterprise	13

The paper with the greater reputation for military subjects, however, is the Daily Telegraph (where candidates for such obituaries are known, in Telegraph argot, as “The Moustaches”). As Table 4 indicates, that primacy was demonstrated in the survey period: there were 23 subjects from the armed services (out of a total of 183), comfortably sufficient for the category to achieve second place in the Telegraph list. This measure of military authority can be attributed to a platoon of expert contributors: three retired officers (navy, army, air force) plus a former Colour Sergeant of the Irish Guards who specialises in obituaries of “other ranks”. He maintains productive contacts among the Chelsea Pensioners.

TABLE 4. Demographic selection (leading categories)—Daily Telegraph

Performing arts	32
Military	23
Scholarship	16
Private enterprise	14
Sport	13
Authorship	12
Politics	11
Medical science	9
Religion	8
Communication media	7

The Guardian's concern for illustration was reflected in its high incidence of subjects that traditionally generate graphic visual images: the performing arts, the communication media, and the fine arts (painting, sculpture, photography, fashion design). Entertainment industry life stories (63) accounted for more than a quarter of the 242 obituaries. As Table 5 shows, the Guardian is content to cede the military category to the Telegraph and Times, printing just eight from this demographic group. (The Independent was even less interested; of its 267 obituaries, only four were of a military character.) The obituaries editor of the Guardian offers a candid explanation on the point, citing a perceived lack of reader interest and an admission that the expertise lies elsewhere: “Because the Telegraph is so strong in military obituaries, it's not worth our while competing” (Robert White).

TABLE 5. Demographic selection (leading categories)—The Guardian

Performing arts	63
Authorship	22
Politics	21
Scholarship	18
Communication media	17
Fine arts	15
Medical science	12
Sport	11
Military	8
Private enterprise	7

At the foot of the numerical scale, there were solitary obituaries of a rock climber (Independent), a UFO believer (Daily Telegraph), a diver (Guardian), and a barber to the gentry (Times). From the last of those instances, there emerges an engaging aspect of the obituary page selection process: those who are touched by fame. In another eminently readable demonstration of this criterion, both the Times and the Telegraph gave generous play to the life of Margaret Sutherland, who died in April 2007 at the age of 98. In her youth, she had been a maid to Ramsay MacDonald (prime minister for two terms in the 1920s and 1930s). The Times (2007b) described her as “the last survivor of ‘the Lossiemouth lassies’, who in the 1920s left their fishing village to live in the very centre of British politics”. MacDonald, a widower of limited financial means, was required under the custom of the day to provide his own household help. He relied on old fishermen friends in his home town, Lossiemouth, to send their daughters to No. 10, “Maggie” Sutherland therefore spent nine years at Downing Street, winning herself—70 years later—recognition on two obituary pages in the quality press.

Delivery and Deliberation

The British obituary frequently delivers its life appraisals in a relaxed fashion, suggesting that time and competitiveness are not necessarily driving factors in the exercise of this art. Squadron Leader Neville Duke, a celebrated test pilot of the 1950s, died in early April 2007; there was a touch of drama about his death as well as about his life. At the age of 85, he had collapsed at an airfield after flying his own light aircraft with his wife on board. The Daily Telegraph ran its obituary six days later; the Guardian took seven days, the Times nine days. But the Independent waited 41 days. In another such instance, the Independent responded with alacrity to the death of Herman Brix, publishing its obituary in early March—just six days after the former film actor had died. It was an intriguing story too; Brix had won silver in the shot putt at the 1928 Olympic Games, succeeded Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan on screen, and lived to the age of 100. The Times liked the narrative so much that it let it marinate for 47 days. An indication of each newspaper's concern, or otherwise, for contemporaneous publication can be gauged from Table 6.

TABLE 6. Elapsed time between date of subject's death and obituary publication

	Total number of obituaries	Obituaries published
		within 7 days	8–28 days	29 days or more
Times	307	103 (34%)	121 (40%)	83 (27%)*
Daily Telegraph	183	86 (47%)	67 (37%)	30 (16%)
Guardian	242	79 (33%)	86 (36%)	77 (32%)*
Independent	267	68 (25%)	178 (67%)	21 (8%)
*Rounded percentages: total more than 100%.
On five occasions, the Times published an obituary more than 70 days old; the oldest was 77 days.
On two occasions, the Telegraph published an obituary more than 80 days old; the oldest was 108 days.
On three occasions, the Guardian published an obituary more than 100 days old; the oldest was 118 days.
On three occasions, the Independent published an obituary more than 90 days old; the oldest was 107 days.

This willingness to indulge in occasional episodes of stately deliberation is regarded by Robert White, at the Guardian, as being a habit unlikely to upset the audience:

The readers don't see you as being in competition with the other papers. They don't actually care or know about what's in the other papers. Readers never say “That's old stuff.” Time isn't the imperative factor. If it's not a figure that readers are expecting to read about, then it can wait its turn until being served up really well.

Defending his willingness to condone the Daily Telegraph's 108-day delay, for an Indian politician, Andrew McKie adds: “If it's still an interesting story, why not run it?”

Dominant Reference

Just as the obituaries page allows some departures from the urgency of daily journalism, so too does it at times permit deviations from house style. This is particularly the case in the form chosen for in-text naming references to an obituary's central character. The Guardian (2007) decrees in its style guide that honorifics can be omitted in certain circumstances and that writers should “use surnames only after first mention … for the dead”. On its obituaries page, the Guardian—in common with other members of the “quality quartet”—always omits honorifics; it displays a less predictable pattern of subject reference in other respects, however. In its 242 obituaries published during the three-month survey period, the Guardian applied the following variations in the dominant form of reference: surname only 184; given name only 56; both names 2. Robert White says that he is guided by the choice of the individual writer.

At the Daily Telegraph, a chivalrous variation on this practice occurs. In its 183 obituaries, the Telegraph's dominant reference was applied as follows: surname only 155; both names 24; given name 4. Those “both names” and “given name” applications were restricted to female subjects, for the Telegraph cannot bring itself to use a “surname only” construction for women's obituaries:

Yes, we do reproduce women's names in full. It looks discourteous to call a woman by her surname [only]. I don't know why I think it looks blunt and brutal, but I do. It may seem patronising and old-fashioned, but it's the way we do it. I just think it's a question of gut instinct. It seems less rude. (Andrew McKie)

Accordingly, a female solicitor who had once been wrongfully convicted of murder was referred to 11 times as “Sally Clark”, after the first mention, in her Daily Telegraph obituary of 19 March (2007a). On the Times page the same day (2007a), she was “Clark” seven times; her given name was used only at the first mention and to differentiate her from juxtapositioned textual references to her husband. Peter Davies, chief obituaries writer at the Times, finds the Telegraph approach endearingly antiquated: “There used to be a feeling here that it was slightly unchivalrous to call a woman by her surname, but we got over that barrier. It's fairly ‘Jurassic Park’.” A more uniform application of style, therefore, is encountered on the obituary pages of the Times, and of the Independent, with these results:

• Times: surname only 301; given name only 3; pronoun 2; both names 1.

• Independent: surname only 256; given name only 5; both names 5; pronoun 1.

The characteristics of Lives in Brief (on the Times page) and Other Lives (at the Guardian) impose their own variations in dominant reference:

• Lives in Brief: pronoun 63; surname only 35; both names 1.

• Other Lives: given name only 71; pronoun 8; surname only 5; nickname 1.

The Lives in Brief and Other Lives counts are explained by, respectively, the compact nature of the Times feature and the informality of the Guardian's reader contributions. The nature of Other Lives also supplies a strand of personal reminiscence and subjectivity which owes more to the eulogy than the classic obituary in mood. This collection of tributes, in remembrance of relatives and acquaintances, demonstrates a noted polarity of practice when compared with the unsigned variety's measured delivery.

Cause of Death

There were marked contrasts in specifying the cause of death. Of the four papers under review, the Guardian and the Times displayed some appreciable commitment to its inclusion; the Daily Telegraph and the Independent largely ignored it. Table 7 presents the incidence (with percentages rounded), ranging from a high of 33 per cent (Guardian) to a low of 7 per cent (Independent).

TABLE 7. Cause of death specified: incidence of inclusion

	Total	Cause specified
Guardian	242	79 (33%)
Times	307	94 (31%)
Daily Telegraph	183	20 (11%)
Independent	267	19 (7%)
Other Lives (Guardian)	85	24 (28%)
Lives in Brief (Times)	99	24 (24%)

In seeking and in disregarding cause of death, house conventions are observed. At the Guardian, the most determined seeker among this newspaper quartet, an age factor applies: “We take the view that in obituaries of people up to the age of 70, readers want to know the cause. If it's available, there's no reason not to print it” (Robert White).

This level of interest is apparent too in the Other Lives obituaries: as Table 7 indicates, nearly a third of these Guardian reader-authors included cause. A similar incidence is found at the Times, where cause is pursued if the subject is under 80. Until recently, that age limit was set at 70, but has been revised owing to increased longevity within society in general (Peter Davies).

At the Daily Telegraph, the question is answered if it establishes a relevant point within the obituary's narrative:

If it comes into the story and it's germane, we put it in. But frankly, I don't think it generally comes into the story for anyone over the age of 70 unless they had struggled with illness for the last dozen or so years of life and it had greatly affected the way they lived. (Andrew McKie)

In recording that view, the Daily Telegraph obituaries editor is observing an entrenched policy of his newspaper. During this three-month survey, the Telegraph included cause of death in 20 (11 per cent) of its 183 published accounts. This degree of disinclination is similar to that found in The Very Best of The Daily Telegraph Books of Obituaries, an anthology compiled by Hugh Massingberd (2001a), who edited the page from 1986 until 1994. Of the anthology's 100 reprinted obituaries, originally published between 1987 and 1999, just nine supply information on the cause of death; in six of those it is clearly stated and in the other three a cause is implied.

Precedence rules, for the moment, at the Independent too. James Fergusson, as obituaries editor from 1986 until April 2007, always preferred to omit any reference to cause unless it formed an integral element of the portrait overall, as “in the case of a mountaineer falling off a cliff” (Starck, 2004, p. 200). In his own dissertation on the topic, he has argued that the fact of death should simply be seen as “the occasion for an obituary; the cue for publishing a small biography” (Fergusson, 2000, p. 158). With this shibboleth, and its legacy, in place for much of the March to May 2007 review, the Independent included a cause of death in only 19 (7 per cent) of its 267 obituaries. Nevertheless, Diana Gower has conceded that editorial policy in this regard does not necessarily coincide with the natural curiosity of readers:

It's an old argument; what we are writing about is life rather than death. But readers do seem to be interested to find out the cause. We're open to suggestions—so I wouldn't rule out some sort of a change.

British practice in this respect is notably different from that pursued in the American press. Ball and Jonnes (2000), p. 16) found that the New York Times had identified cause of death in 6234 instances (67 per cent) of the 9325 obituaries they analysed over a six-year period. The British model is not so revealing, warned off perhaps by a late 1980s incident at the Daily Telegraph. When the editorial regime of the day tried to encourage a greater measure of explicit disclosure in this respect, the obituaries desk responded by demonstrating the potential for peril it might occasion:

An injunction arrived from on high that we were to make a point of including the cause of death. As it happened, a candidate for the morgue of the morrow, a priapic jazzer, had handed in his dinner pail after a penile implant had unfortunately exploded. We duly complied with the editorial diktat. (Massingberd, 2001b)

Restraint has been practised by the Daily Telegraph, and (to varying degrees) its fellow members of the “quality quartet”, ever since.

Conclusions

This study, the first quantitative assessment of any significant dimension in contemporary British obituary publishing, has identified preferences and prejudices in editorial practice. Both the Times and the Daily Telegraph adhere resolutely to a policy of uncredited authorship, defending it on grounds of practicality and editorial integrity. The Independent and the Guardian, by way of contrast, proclaim the virtues of author credits. The Guardian goes further in this regard, encouraging readers to submit obituaries of family and friends to a regular feature entitled Other Lives. The names of those amateur contributors are published. Obituary columns also demonstrate some in-house diversity. There are departures from proclaimed house style and, often, an apparently haphazard approach in naming the obituary's central character. At the Guardian, there is a willingness to use the subject's given name, if that is the choice of the contributing writer; at the Daily Telegraph, female subjects are consistently accorded both given name and surname. It would be “rude” and “brutal”, says the Telegraph, to do otherwise. There is deviation from standard journalism behaviour too in story germination: gaps of a month between date of death and date of obituary are not uncommon. Photographic selection provides another instance of the obituary's divergence from conventional practice encountered on the news pages; antiquity of image, rather than topicality, is frequently preferred—particularly when narrative and character study are driven by events long past. There appears to be a shortage of suitable female candidates for obituary pages across the “quality quartet”. In line with studies conducted in the United States and Australia over the past 30 years, the four newspapers under review displayed a pronounced bias towards male subjects. Performance in this area ranges downward from the Guardian (19 per cent female subjects) to the Times (13 per cent). It grows substantially, however, in the Guardian's Other Lives section, which relies on reader contributions; this suggests that readers at large might welcome a redress of the gender imbalance. The obituaries editor at the Daily Telegraph sees such a change as axiomatic, given the societal shift in women's professional callings. Cause of death was pursued, as an element of this exercise in instant biography, with marked differences in enthusiasm. Its inclusion factor ranged from 33 per cent (Guardian) to 7 per cent (Independent), demonstrating perhaps that—in Britain's quality press—the obituary is generally much more concerned with life than with death.

Notes

1. As far as style of obituary presentation is concerned, those abbreviated accounts from the Times (along with Other Lives, published by the Guardian) are not compared in detail here with the practices adopted by rival newspapers. However, statistical findings relating to Lives in Brief and Other Lives do appear within this study's overall quantitative comparisons.

2. Peter Davies, Times, interview with the author, 4 October 2007.

3. Andrew McKie, Daily Telegraph, interview with the author, 18 September 2007.

4. Robert White, Guardian, interview with the author, 17 September 2007.

5. Diana Gower, Independent, interview with the author, 3 October 2007.