FUnerals as public Services in long Eighteenth century London

Project Information

FuSEL

Grant agreement ID: 704728

DOI

10.3030/704728

Project closed

EC signature date 24 February 2016

Start date 1 July 2016

End date 30 June 2018

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 195 454,80

EU contribution

€ 195 454,80

Coordinated by

BIRKBECK COLLEGE - UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FuSEL (FUnerals as public Services in long Eighteenth century London)

Reporting period: 2016-07-01 to 2018-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The research aims to understand the organization and functioning of services for the community in early modern London through a concrete case study, namely the ways in which funerals and burials were managed during the long eighteenth century (1670-1852). Studying burial services, broadly defined, allows a comprehensive perspective on the policies and practices adopted by early modern societies to satisfy an important need of the community. This need is material and immaterial at the same time: in fact, every city faced the attempt to reconcile logistical, economical, juridical, sanitary and spiritual requirements in properly disposing of the dead. Furthermore, since the need for burial was universal and was marked by some kind of ceremony for the entire population without any distinction apart from confession, the topic allows investigation across the whole of society. Finally, funeral services involved a large and diverse number of actors (government, city authorities, Church, corporations, and many individuals such as artisans, tradesmen, etc.), more than any other service for the community. A better knowledge of pre-contemporary services for the community will allow us to identify more clearly which elements the modern public services inherited from them. Funerals and burials administration, in particular, contain a moral component that is very interesting in order to verify how categories such as “just price” and “moral economy” influenced the market and, perhaps, the modern conception of public good. Therefore, the main ambition of the project is to provide a strong historical enquiry on early public services in order to identify innovative and strategic approaches to social welfare reform at various levels.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project had three research objectives:

1) Analyzing the fundamentals, the organization and the activities of services created to manage funerals and burials in London metropolitan area during the long eighteenth century.
2) Understanding the point of view of the users, often neglected in the historiography. The experience of the inhabitants – and more generally of social bodies – their degree of satisfaction, and their participation in the construction of public services.
3) Following the development of the service in time and space in order to understand whether the actors could influence or manipulate it, and how.

To have the widest possible perspective, the research began with the study of probate accounts, namely the acts that recorded the deceased’s personal estates, including funeral expenses. This made it possible to identify the two main actors involved in the funeral service: the undertakers, and the clergy. Regarding the firsts, the available sources do not allow to proceed with an adequate quantitative analysis. In fact, it impossible to know how many undertakers were active in London or whether this was their only occupation, because in many cases it is possible to verify how a single entrepreneur could carry out several activities at the same time, including that of undertaker. Otherwise, the qualitative study of some undertakers’ ledgers , of the announcements published in the newspapers, and of the printed sources , has provided a great deal of unpublished information. The emergence of undertaking activity was a peculiarity of the eighteenth-century London. The rapid decline of the College of Arms, which had a near-monopoly over ceremonies since the 16th century, opened the way to news entrepreneurs, apparently without a centralized organisation or a subdivision of the market. In relation to practices and attitudes, they remained mostly unaltered, thus the heraldic funeral remains a model for the standards of decency demanded by the population.
Despite the great interest aroused by the activity of the undertakers, their records do not allow to examine large sections of the population. Most of the London’s inhabitants could not afford the cost of a lavish funeral; probate accounts reveal only one segment of the society: the well-off. But there was another and less known aspect, consisting in parish duties, namely the emoluments for the spiritual service granted by the parson and his assistants. These duties, apparently of minor importance, become crucial if we consider that they were mandatory, while undertakers’ expenses were not. For that reasons, parish records, especially accounting books, can help to have a wider perspective on funeral practices.
The starting point consisted of 121 tables of fees (official tarifs for all sacred performances) corresponding to as many parishes, collected by the government in the 1630s. The subsequent variations of these tables have been studied through vestry minutes, and bishop's registers of the diocese of London and Canterbury. After that, a sample of London parishes has been selected in order to study their numerous accounting documents. In fact, as the historiography has frequently pointed, the cost of burial was a reliable test of individual economic standing.
These sources have also enabled to appreciate many aspects of the relationship between the parish institutions and the population, which exposed his needs and the presumed dysfunctions in the management of the service through the vestry meetings. There were quite frequent grievances related to the excess in collecting burial fees, interpreted by the population as an abuse of power of the clergy - sometimes of the churchwardens. This issue was always presented as intolerable for the poorer sections of society. Complaints of the same type were also attested in Naples and Paris (the other two most populated European metropolis) during the 18th century, in the context of the fight against the prerogatives of the clergy. On the contrary, in the case of London, polemics seemed to focus on the social utility of the religious service, very probably because the Church officially depended form the Crown. Therefore, these services had to be provided for a fair price, especially burials.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The research has shown a metropolis that shared many problems in the cohabitation between living and dead with its European counterparts. This in spite of the confessional diversity, which did not seem to be so decisive in the differentiation of social practices. However, different socio-political contexts have led each reality to undertake different measures at different times to solve similar issues. During the early modern period and the beginning of modern era, the London's clergy granted all sacred performances (marriages, baptisms, etc.), especially funerary ones, assuming them as a fundamental service for the community. Among the consequences of this process there was the standardization of practices but also their progressive commodification. In this sense, characteristics attributed by historiography to the funeral practices of the Victorian age date back at least to the end of the seventeenth century. In Britain as in other European countries, ecclesiastical institutions have been pioneers in the development of new ways to organise and manage services for the community.
These results improve the understanding of European cultural heritage and they encourage modern visions and uses of its past. In fact, by explaining the fundamentals of “welfare before the welfare”, this knowledge encourage to recover this important value of modernity in spite of the anachronistic and socially dangerous rhetoric of neo-liberal doctrine.

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