The American Way of Death Revisited - Jessica Mitford [123]
According to “Over My Dead Body,” 50 percent of the British dead were embalmed in the Hodgson era; yet the Independent of January 7, 1992, quoted Peter Hall, general secretary of the British Institute of Embalming, as saying that “a quarter of all corpses in this country are now embalmed.” He voiced the unappetizing suggestion that “the difference between a well-embalmed body and an untreated one is the difference between a plum and a prune.” If these figures are accurate, Mr. Hodgson had succeeded in less than three years in doubling the number of British dead transformed from prune to plum, an encouraging portent for the newly arrived SCI.
I was fortunate to be given what is known in the trade as a “cameo appearance” in the video. This took place in a large and well-appointed undertaker’s showroom where Derek Gibbs, owner of the London Casket Company, explained the offerings. He obligingly raised the casket lids to display a variety of beauteous linings in “luxury velvet” or “high-quality crepe.” Best of all was “The Last Supper,” described in the catalogue as “mahogany finished poplar timber, cream madeira crepe interior. Scene of The Last Supper colour insert in lid. Swing bar handles and adjustable bed. Angel corner pieces supplied on request at no extra cost.”
“Oh, how absolutely smashing,” I said. “I think they’re lovely, they’re absolutely top-quality,” replied Mr. Gibbs. “We do not hard sell them at all. They really just sell themselves.” We had the following conversation:
JM: But they must cost a fortune. First off, how much is the wholesale cost?
DG: Well, we supply purely to the trade, so what funeral directors do in this country is they buy the casket from us, and then they add it to the cost of their traditional funeral service.
JM: How much do you charge them for this, for example? You charge them how much?
DG: Well, I would be loath to say, because as I say we supply to the trade and they would actually add this to their traditional funeral.
JM: That’s why I wanted to find out. How much do you pay for it?
DG: I don’t really want to discuss what we pay—is this a rehearsal?
Long accustomed to the reticence of American funeral directors on the sensitive subject of the wholesale cost of caskets—one of the best-kept trade secrets—I was not surprised by Mr. Gibbs’s reluctance to disclose prices. But as it turned out, this was by no means the end of the matter. Some weeks later, on January 30, 1995, Mr. Gibbs wrote to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, which is responsible for maintaining standards of fairness and privacy. (Its function is roughly parallel to that of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.) His letter was full of anguish:
Apart from one small moment, I thought that I handled myself well and gave sensible and reasonable answers. I accepted that my products are very foreign and extravagant but explained that there was a demand for elaborate high quality burial caskets.
It was to be my first appearance on television and so I told all my customers, friends and family to be sure to watch it. You can therefore imagine my acute embarrassment when the program turned out to be a complete hatchet job on the industry that I serve.…
At the time, I tried to laugh it off.… As time goes on, I felt increasingly angered by the whole affair. Every customer that I visit taunts me with the phrase, “This is only a rehearsal, isn’t it?” …
Reading this letter, I could not fail to be impressed by the poignancy of Mr. Gibbs’s experience. However, it hasn’t hurt his business. In April 1996 he told an interviewer that his casket sales for 1994–95 had been 312—up from 242 the year before.