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WELLAND NEWS
[Welland Telegraph, 10 July 1901]
A prominent undertaker expresses the following sentiments in a contemporary, which are very much to the point: “I wish a law could be passed prohibiting the barbaric custom of opening caskets in public at church funerals. It is a relic of dark ages and has no place in a civilized community. It jars on the sensibility of every tender chord, and it is something the churches and undertakers ought to combine and put a stop to. In nine-tenths of the cases it is merely a pandering to ghoulish curiosity. People who never spoke to the deceased in their lifetime parade around the church, gape at the form of our beloved one, then go out in the presence of death, not to talk of the good deeds done in their life, but to criticize the appearance of the poor clay that death has left for once at their mercy. Death is a sacred thing. If we are going on a long journey we do not make our adieus before a gaping crowd; we ought not to be expected to bid our dead a last good-bye while curiosity stands agape.”
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