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By the 18th century there had emerged in England a demi-reputable tradition of the "dismal trader," although for a long time the undertaker used to inspire communal shudders (in ancient Rome he was barred from politics). Now he had become "a strong, presentable man with a good suit of black clothes of his own"—and the scene was set for The Great American Funeral.
In the earliest colonial days, funerals were a Saturnalian safety valve. "They were the only class of scenes," wrote Hawthorne, "in which our ancestors were wont to steep their tough old hearts in wine and strong drink and indulge in an outbreak of grisly jollity." When a man died, in-laws and out, friends, neighbors and creditors descended on the sobbing widow, who was expected to welcome them with all kinds of vittles—beef, ham, turkeys, oysters, fruit, cheese and sweets—as well as gallons of the local mulekick. After the corpse had been volleyed to Kingdom Come by the customary funeral fusillade, there was bowsing and bundling sparking and frisking on the green And in addition to the hospitality, the bereaved family was expected to provide mementos, usually rings or gloves (one clergyman, in 32 years of funeral-going received 2,940 pairs of gloves).
Answer to Body Snatchers. As the towns began to grow, the tradesmen began to chase the corpses. Before long advertisements like that of Z. Cotton & Son of Cambridge, N.Y. ("Dentists. Undertakers. Picture Frames a Speciality") were a common sight. Sometimes the commercial combinations had a sinister sound as in the case of one Hollis Chaffin of Providence, R.I., an undertaker who ran an old folks' home on the side.
One of the first things the America undertaker changed was the old "wooden overcoat." In an age when the grave robber and the medical student were supposedly working hand in glove, "safe" coffins, made at first of iron, came in vogue. Soon there were models in zinc, glass terra cotta, papier-mâché, hydraulic cement and vulcanized rubber. The coffin torpedo, marketed in 1878, was the final answer to body snatchers—it featured a bomb that was triggered to go off when the coffin lid was lifted. However, the triumph of sepulchral gadgeteering was the "life signal," which offered mechanical surcease for the widespread terror of being accidentally buried alive. In such devices the victim was provided with a bell rope a speaking tube, an air vent or even a ladder.
Gingerbread & Root Beer. When technology had run its gamut, the "aesthetic movement" began. The word "coffin" was suddenly offensive, and undertakers spoke in hushed tones of the "artistic casket." Scrolls proliferated, along with cut glass sculptured silver and Venetian lace. A few years of this and a poet prayed: "Mother dear, when I lie dead / Bury me not in gingerbread!"