THE DEATH CHAIR
OF THE IGOROT MUMMIES

  Please note: There is an image of a corpse in this post.

In 1904 T.S. Eliot visited the St. Louis, Missouri World’s Fair. In the Philippine Exposition section he explored the village of the Igorot people. He was so inspired by them that in 1905 he wrote the short story, “The Man Who Was King”.

Igorots resting after dancing while World's Fair visitors look on.

The Bontoc Igorot warrior tribe live on the banks of the Chico River in the mountains on the island of Luzon where they formerly practised head hunting. They are known for their distinctive tattoos.

Their death rituals are unlike any I’ve come across.

The Igorot respond emotionally to death without a great swell of passion, unless the death is of a child, or the early death of a woman’s husband. There is no sorrow or lamentation for the elderly. It is said that Igorot men don’t cry at all for the dead.

 When death is near, a chicken is killed, people gather, eat and wait.

 Immediately after death, the body of the deceased is washed and then wrapped in a burial robe. A cloth is placed on top of the head, the face left uncovered.

Construction of the death chair begins.

It is a roughly made, high-backed chair with a low seat.

The corpse is bound to the chair with a band that fastens his waist, arms and head. The chair is placed close to the door of the house with the deceased facing out so that all can see him.

Seating the deceased on the chair is a ritual usually reserved for the elderly, for the relatively rich and those with many descendants. It’s a show of respect and a compliance with tradition, and enables a last face-to-face communication between the deceased and his relatives. Visitors may have travelled great distances to pay their respects and communicate with the deceased; they talk to him as if he were alive and expect him to listen to their pleas, their desires, and well wishes. If this ritual and tradition was not performed by a person who had requested it before death, it was assumed that the deceased’s soul may come back to bother his relatives by making them sick, or by killing another in the family.

Fires are built around the death chair to protect the corpse and drive away flies. Usually a relative of the deceased sits by the corpse, watching closely to swat flies, but also people were paid to keep the flies away so they wouldn’t enter the house. The smoke from the fire helped to dry out the body. At one point in their history, the Igorot mummified their deceased by leaving the corpse in the death chair for up to six months.

Slowly, over the next few days, people begin to gather and come to the home of the deceased. More fowl are beaten to death. A caribou is slaughtered, eaten, and the horns and a portion of the skull are taken inside the house and hung from the ceiling.

Children play, women nurse babies and spin thread, more people arrive and the corpse sits in the chair blackening and swelling while life goes on normally around it. Families laugh and tell stories.

Women weaving at a widow's hut.

The women begin a chant. More food. They sing a word-less song; it is soothing and not a dirge.

Igorot women, 1900.

The number of people increase, over one hundred now have gathered.

The men sing a low song with these words:

“Now you are dead; we are all here to see you. We have given you all things necessary, and have made good preparation for the burial. Do not come to call away to kill any of your relatives or friends.”

A pine coffin appears, wood chips strewn about the ground. It is turned upside down and makes a seat for several visitors as children play around it.

More people arrive; hogs, chicken and dogs are eaten. The roasting meat scent mingles with the heavy, sickening odour of the corpse in the chair, but those who sit near him do not flinch, seem not to notice at all.

A dozen men carry digging sticks and dirt baskets to the fringes of the encampment as the sun begins to set. They begin digging to the depth of five feet.

The last of the new arrivals stop by the chair of the corpse to pay their respects. Men move the coffin to the chair’s feet, untie the bands, pick up the corpse and lower him into the coffin.

An old woman places two breechcloths and a blanket over the body, and a small white cloth over the eyes. The cloth already on top of his head is replaced with a clean one.

Onto the men’s shoulder the coffin is hefted and then quickly carried to the grave.

Many of the other men follow - one brings the coffin cover and another the caribou horns—but the women and children remain behind, as is custom.

The coffin is then placed in the grave and the cover is lowered in place, the caribou horns are laid on top facing the head. It takes sixty seconds for the men to fill the grave, many men working as fast as they possibly can, for animals must not cross the trail or evil will follow. 

On the day after the burial, men and boys go to the river to fish and a fish feast is laid for the evening meal. The next day all the visitors return home with plates of rice, a gift from the deceased’s family.

 The fish trap.

This ritual might take place over a period of two to eight days, depending on the size of the family and the importance of the deceased.

 

 

 

5 MEMORABLE GRAVEYARDS IN LITERATURE

 

 

I was delighted to write a post for the fabulous Off the Shelf website, a site created by editors, authors and others in the publishing industry to help readers discover wonderful books they might not know about.

I was surprised while doing the research to be reminded that there are a great many graveyards and cemeteries in literature. I pulled books from my shelves that held graveyards within their pages until they towered on the floor near my desk.

 

I also found it interesting that, in a few cases, humour trickled through a few graveyard scenes in a slightly macabre way, as in my first selection, THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER. 

 

I hope you enjoy 5 Memorable Graveyards in Literature 

 

The Freshly Dug Grave

In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, two boys sneak out of bed and steal away into the midnight air in search of devils in the graveyard. What could possibly go wrong? Tom and Huck huddle behind a tree petrified as three men approach the mound of a fresh grave. Hidden from view, they watch in horror as men they recognize from town strike the grave with their shovels and begin digging up a corpse. When the job is done, one of the grave robbers demands extra payment. A fight ensues, a murder is committed, the weapon being a headstone no less, and the only witnesses to the crime flee in terror. All this in Twain’s inimitable voice.

- See more at: http://offtheshelf.com/2014/05/5-memorable-graveyards-in-literature/#sthash.9eMJzpPl.dpuf

The Freshly Dug Grave

In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, two boys sneak out of bed and steal away into the midnight air in search of devils in the graveyard. What could possibly go wrong? Tom and Huck huddle behind a tree petrified as three men approach the mound of a fresh grave. Hidden from view, they watch in horror as men they recognize from town strike the grave with their shovels and begin digging up a corpse. When the job is done, one of the grave robbers demands extra payment. A fight ensues, a murder is committed, the weapon being a headstone no less, and the only witnesses to the crime flee in terror. All this in Twain’s inimitable voice.

- See more at: http://offtheshelf.com/2014/05/5-memorable-graveyards-in-literature/#sthash.9eMJzpPl.dpuf

 

Undertaker Ghost Signs Around the World

From the smallest towns in America to remote settlements in Australia, ghost signs remind us of the undertakers of the past who once built coffins and provided a place for the preparation for burials of their citizens.

First up is this colourful old sign in Clyde, New Zealand.

In this unique double ghost sign in Illinois, you can just make out the original undertaker sign beneath the funeral home sign. 

It’s not exactly a ghost sign, instead it represents evidence of undertaking in Gulong, Australia.

The foreboding hand in Eureka Springs, Arizona.

A woman in Carson City, Nevada found this sign in her attic.

There is something melancholic about the poise of these beautiful carriages against the tatty façade of this funeral parlour in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

In Milwaukee this undertaker catered to your carriage needs for both your wedding and your funeral.

Included for its beauty, this Art Deco influenced building enhanced by shiny black tiles is the Hunold Bestattungen Funeral Home in Berlin.

Lastly, this faded ghost sign in St. Louis is explicit in its simplicity.

 

 

THE FACES OF DEATH

When I was a child, every morning I walked to elementary school from our funeral home. But before I left home, I made a ritualistic visit to the room where the dead lay, ready for visitors to view. I approached the casket that cradled our town’s most recently departed and studied the face of the man or woman who rested temporarily in their last but one stop to the cemetery.

My father worked with the faces of the deceased, moulding lips with the tips of his fingers, repositioning the corners of their mouths, forming a final image for their families and friends. Devoid of movement and emotion, the face of a dead person loses a portion of its individuality, though the likeness is still there, like a death mask.

I once returned from Egypt with an artefact. When I first saw it, secreted away in a dark apartment on a back street in Cairo, I was immediately drawn to it and my memories of all the dead faces of my childhood came flooding back. Tea was served as I purchased a delicate piece of papyrus, or linen, on which was painted the face of an ancient Egyptian destined for entombment. This cloth-like substance was the result of the first process in the creation of a death mask. It would have then been soaked in plaster and pressed onto wood. I was assured it was authentic, but I may have been taken for a ride.

Before photography, death masks were the most accurate representation of the deceased. While King Tut’s death mask is probably the most famous of the ancient Egyptians, I’ve found others that are more intriguing to me.

In the 17^th century death masks were used as a model for artists who created effigy sculptures for tombs. Usually masks were made just hours after death and having progressed from the wood of the ancient Egyptians, they were produced using a cast made of wax or plaster.

In 1669 Samuel Pepys had a life mask made about which he said, “I was vexed to be forced to daub all my face over with Pomatum (a scented ointment), but it was pretty to feel how soft and easy it is done on the face, and by and by, by degrees, how hard it becomes, that you cannot break it, and sets so close that you cannot pull it off, and yet so easy that is as soft as a pillow.”

By the 19th century, death masks were no longer simply tools for artists. The pseudoscience of phrenology held mainstream popularity and phrenologists eagerly collected death masks to study the skull shapes. The Victorians considered the masks as mementos and used the plaster negative to make multiple copies. It was not unusual for families to proudly display them to commemorate the dead.

These are a selection of death masks taken from John Delaney’s 
A Pictorial Guide 

Manuscripts Division
Department of Rare Books and Special Collections
Princeton University Library
2003 

 Dante Gabriel Rossetti

 

Wilhelm von Kaulbach

 Benjamin Franklin

It was a bit harder to find death masks of women. I winced when I first saw this, because of her long confinement and almost prison-like sentence to her bed in life, here she was again captured in death.

Frida Kahlo

But death masks were also used to preserve the faces of the unknown as in the case of L'Inconnue de la Seine, "the unknown woman of the Seine" who was found drowned in the Paris river in the 1880’s. Never identified, she gained cult status when her death mask, made by an infatuated pathologist, inspired art and literature across the globe, such was her beauty in death.

The incredible journey of the drowned woman’s face continued through history when a Norwegian toy maker used her likeness to create “Resusci Anne”, also known as “Rescue Annie” a training mannequin used to teach CPR.

A life taken, a life saved.

EXCUSE ME........

If you're looking for Kate's newest blog post, this week it can be found here:

At the home of the  Memento Moriatas 

 Where tales of dastardly deaths in a London cemetery await your reading pleasure.

 

THE ACCOUTREMENT OF DEATH

The Newman Brothers Coffin Fitting Works left such an impression upon me that I felt compelled to offer this tribute to the history and the people who worked in this wonderful death-related business.

I hope you enjoy this 1.5 minute video. Please turn up your volume.

Paul Cripps of bitesizevideo is responsible for the visual magic and editing.

For a larger view click here.

A VISIT TO

THE VICTORIAN COFFIN FURNITURE FACTORY

  

In a subtle, creeping moment I realized that my life was not normal. No other child in my class slept above a room full of caskets. To descend the stairs in our house meant discovering who might be lying in one of those open caskets, a reposed, powdered face ready for viewing. No child I knew looked forward to a visit to the cemetery, or was subjected to sitting in long stretches of silence while a funeral service droned on downstairs, the organ music signalling The End notes.

Since then I have sought the unusual without much thought that the draw emanated from that languid funeral home, a dot on the map of the American South. I could never foresee that once I left my father’s house of death, I would one day stand in a remarkable historic coffin fittings factory in Birmingham, England.

When I first read of the existence of the Newman Brothers Coffin Furniture Factory I experienced a mighty magnetic pull to discover what was sure to be a treasure. When I realized the goal of the talented people at the Birmingham Conservation Trust, I felt a strong urge to shout:

LISTEN UP! THERE ARE EXTRAORDINARY PLANS UNDERWAY TO CREATE BRITAIN’S FIRST FUNEREAL MUSEUM. 

In 1894 raw materials arrived via the Birmingham Fazeley Canal to the yard doors of 13-15 Fleet Street, a short street then full of manufacturers. Today, Newman Brothers is the last to stand, the only complete historic building left, gloriously sandwiched between the towering jagged modern buildings that now dominate the street. 

Its almost hidden position faces east where light streams into the small paned cast iron windows of the three-story Victorian building and into the windows of the rebuilt 1960s two-story building.

This was the setting where for over one hundred years artisan funereal work was accomplished to such a high standard that the coffin fittings produced here, from raw material to finished product, were world famous and seen on the coffins of Churchill, the Queen Mother and Princess Diana. 

Winston Churchill's coffin is lowered into the grave at Bladon Graveyard

In an atmosphere where everyone felt part of a family, and wherein a large number of females were employed, like Diamond Lil who read teacups, and Dolly who was a little deaf, employees are well remembered in photographs and in the palpable oral history arm of the project. Polishers, stampers, and piercers are brought to life through interviews and the products they created in the Grade II listed building.

Stamp Room

Though Newman Brothers had plans to begin manufacturing coffins, the plans never came to fruition; however, from the mid twentieth century they began manufacturing burial shrouds and coffin linings. 

 

When the factory was sold in 2003 everything was left in situ, as if the entire company had just stepped out to lunch. Thousands of artefacts littered the rooms. Along with stock, manufacturing tools and equipment, items of poignancy were startling. Overalls hung on a hook. A woman’s handbag was left behind. Tea making accoutrement stood at the ready, and the tongs for making toast hung by the fireside.

The Newman Brothers travelling salesman's bag, fully stocked.

 

Imagine Mr. Allen on his Triumph motorbike, his samples bags filled with breast plates, coffin handles, crucifixes, catalogues and shroud material, all tucked away in the wickerwork sidecar and headed all over England and Ireland where his was the first motorbike to travel many of its roads.

When I was a child I often watched my father polish the handles of one of his many caskets. Not that they needed this extra care; the casket and its fittings arrived in perfect condition. Could any of them have possibly originated from Newman Brothers?

And how many ways might one use a casket handle? They make a nice paperweight, or door handle…

The plans for the museum are terrifically ambitious. The use of film, sound, an iBook interactive element, special hands on activities for children, object interpretation, to name only a few mediums, will contribute to create one of the premier examples of how a Victorian factory actually worked, while simultaneously showing the changes in the business of death and funerary rituals from the Victorian era to the present.

The renovation has begun and next year 13-15 Fleet Street will be home to its own unique jewel in The Jewellery Quarter of Birmingham.

Many thanks to my guide, the brilliantly informed volunteer Barbara Nomikos who deftly lead me room by room, step by step through the fascinating pre-renovated world of funeral furniture manufacturing. Grateful thanks also to Suzanne Carter of the Birmingham Conservation Trust for permissions and introductions.