# In a hospital, how are dead bodies moved from the room to the morgue? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 27, 2014, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354 "2014-05-27T05:58:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![picunurse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2014, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/61 "2014-06-06T05:18:48Z")
> [@WhoaWhoaWhoa](#): > > I have never seen that either, after viewing/handling in excess of 4,000 bodies, with one exception- a man was working in a garage when the garage blew up (I never learned how) but his body was basically charred to a crisp, and he was burned into a position of sitting on a low chair, hands forward, with an erection. Burns are a different story. You can tell if a person succumbed to smoke or fire. The CO folks will be more or less in an anitomical position, ex. lying on the floor reaching. The ones who burned will be curled up like a pill bug. I didn’t notice erections on and of the seven I helped take out of a C-130 that crashed and burned on the runway of the AFB where I was stationed. Didn’t mean they weren’t there, I just was so freaked out by what I was doing. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/62 "2014-06-07T01:56:13Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Somewhere in SD **Quodcap** tells the story of someone hung like a horse, dies with a tent pole for the sheet covering him on the gurney, which caused some comment. I have no recollection of such an event. Of course, after 30 years as a physician, details do become fuzzy. But I _think_ I’d remember that. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/63 "2014-06-07T02:43:14Z")
Further research has revealed: 1. This OP popped up at least once before, with some of the same players here: Are hospital morgues really located on the ground floor? 1. I was incorrect in ascribing that anecdote to the Good Doctor **Qadgop** (and my apologies for misspelling his name). In my defense, it appeared in a thread from 10 years ago, a classic of its kind, really, which he OP’ed. The anecdote was related by **DoctorJ** in post #13 in My patient’s bizarre penis The most surprising thing for me in that thread was to learn that such a thing as a bagel dog exists. ---
**Author:** ![flatlined](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb9ed0/32.png) [@flatlined](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flatlined)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/64 "2014-06-07T03:32:24Z")
**WhoaWhoaWhoa** welcome to the Dope. Thank you so much for signing up to make that very interesting and informative post. For some reason, I thought that it would be a standardized procedure. In retrospect, I should have known that there couldn’t be one rule that everyone must follow. I certainly didn’t know this part _Deceased who are of the Jewish or Islamic faiths cannot go to the morgue or be handled by non-Jewish hands._ Does this mean that funeral homes in areas with those faiths selectively hire people of those faiths…or do they just feel lucky when they learn that a new employee is of those faiths? (I’m certainly not asking what your faith is, and honestly I wouldn’t even care if not for this part of your post.) Again, thanks for joining the Dope. I hope to read more of your posts in the future. Also, thank you to everyone who posted. Ignorance has certainly been fought here. ---
**Author:** ![picunurse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/65 "2014-06-07T08:23:48Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Further research has revealed: > > 1. This OP popped up at least once before, with some of the same players here: > > Are hospital morgues really located on the ground floor? > > 1. I was incorrect in ascribing that anecdote to the Good Doctor **Qadgop** (and my apologies for misspelling his name). In my defense, it appeared in a thread from 10 years ago, a classic of its kind, really, which he OP’ed. > > The anecdote was related by **DoctorJ** in post #13 in > > My patient’s bizarre penis > The most surprising thing for me in that thread was to learn that such a thing as a bagel dog exists. Yeah, still don’t believe it. Sounds like the beginning of an urban legend. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/66 "2014-06-07T14:40:46Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > 1. I was incorrect in ascribing that anecdote to the Good Doctor **Qadgop** (and my apologies for misspelling his name). In my defense, it appeared in a thread from 10 years ago, a classic of its kind, really, which he OP’ed. > > The anecdote was related by **DoctorJ** in post #13 in > > My patient’s bizarre penis > [@picunurse](#): > > Yeah, still don’t believe it. Sounds like the beginning of an urban legend. the guy was Polish. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/67 "2014-06-07T15:22:50Z")
> [@picunurse](#): > > Yeah, still don’t believe it. Sounds like the beginning of an urban legend. **DoctorJ** said he saw it himself, and it’s a known phenomenon after death, so I’m inclined to believe there’s something to it. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/68 "2014-06-07T17:33:22Z")
> [@flatlined](#): > > **WhoaWhoaWhoa** welcome to the Dope. Thank you so much for signing up to make that very interesting and informative post. > > For some reason, I thought that it would be a standardized procedure. In retrospect, I should have known that there couldn’t be one rule that everyone must follow. > > I certainly didn’t know this part _Deceased who are of the Jewish or Islamic faiths cannot go to the morgue or be handled by non-Jewish hands._ Does this mean that funeral homes in areas with those faiths selectively hire people of those faiths…or do they just feel lucky when they learn that a new employee is of those faiths? > > (I’m certainly not asking what your faith is, and honestly I wouldn’t even care if not for this part of your post.) > > Again, thanks for joining the Dope. I hope to read more of your posts in the future. > > Also, thank you to everyone who posted. Ignorance has certainly been fought here. I expect the requirement for Jewish people is waived in areas where there just aren’t any Jewish people to do the job. At my dad’s hospital there would have been hardly any in the area at all, and due to the demographics of the area there would have been many more older Jewish people likely to cark it than younger Jewish people qualified to handle them in the morgue. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/69 "2014-06-07T18:41:36Z")
Jewish people would rather take care of the body themselves. Nursing homes know this, and when there’s no reason not to (no inquiry or autopsy planned) they just get out of the way when the family and/or friends come to deal with it. ---
**Author:** ![flatlined](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb9ed0/32.png) [@flatlined](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flatlined)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/70 "2014-06-07T22:07:40Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > I expect the requirement for Jewish people is waived in areas where there just aren’t any Jewish people to do the job. > > At my dad’s hospital there would have been hardly any in the area at all, and due to the demographics of the area there would have been many more older Jewish people likely to cark it than younger Jewish people qualified to handle them in the morgue. See…that’s why I wondered. I know that when I was in charge of interviewing people for jobs, I could not ask about religion. I didn’t know if funeral homes have special dispensation and can ask or if they just hope that they will get lucky with their new hire. > [@WhyNot](#): > > Jewish people would rather take care of the body themselves. Nursing homes know this, and when there’s no reason not to (no inquiry or autopsy planned) they just get out of the way when the family and/or friends come to deal with it. I get this, but sadly, many people don’t live to die of “natural causes” in a nursing home. What happens if a Jewish person died in a car crash, or a robbery gone wrong, or from being in the wrong bed when the husband/wife came home, or just dropped dead in the street from a heart attack? ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/71 "2014-06-07T22:21:19Z")
> [@flatlined](#): > > See…that’s why I wondered. I know that when I was in charge of interviewing people for jobs, I could not ask about religion. I didn’t know if funeral homes have special dispensation and can ask or if they just hope that they will get lucky with their new hire. > > I get this, but sadly, many people don’t live to die of “natural causes” in a nursing home. What happens if a Jewish person died in a car crash, or a robbery gone wrong, or from being in the wrong bed when the husband/wife came home, or just dropped dead in the street from a heart attack? The interviewer can ask if there are reasons why the candidate would be unable to perform the functions of their job which can prompt an answer relating to religion. If you suspect that someone’s religion would prevent them from fulfilling their functions, you should phrase it in terms of their functions, not their religion. Pretty sure that in most Western jurisdictions, the State’s compelling interest in ruling out murder/criminal negligence and improving safety trumps religious qualms. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/72 "2014-06-07T22:23:53Z")
I don’t know if that is true about Jewish Orthodoxy, although it might be. A chevra kadisha (see the references there), will do their stuff for anyone known to the community, or for any Jew a family or hospital asks for. (Bad grammar…) When my father-in-law died of cancer in the hospital, two (three?) guys came in, wrapped him lickety-split and he was out the door. From there (the topic of OP), I have no idea. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/73 "2014-06-07T22:24:51Z")
As to post-life erections … IANA medical anybody but I did read this book: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiff:\_The\_Curious\_Lives\_of\_Human\_Cadavers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiff:_The_Curious_Lives_of_Human_Cadavers) which I can heartily recommend as a serious but light treatment of a fascinating but often-shunned topic. Along the way she mentions that many male cadavers end up, if not erect, at least engorged well above normal size. I suppose if a cadaver had lain (sp?) in the correct posture for awhile you could get something approximating a post-life erection. But like I said, in this area I’m no expert, not even an amateur. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/74 "2014-06-07T22:35:41Z")
Ref Jewish mortuary workers … The US Federal anti-discrimination statutes have exceptions for what are called “bona fide occupational qualifications” or BFOQ in the jargon. It’s 100% acceptable to hire or not hire members of a protected class based on BFOQs. As an obvious example, otherwise strip joints would have to have 50% male dancers. BFOQs are obviously a slippery slope, and the courts have construed them pretty narrowly. E.g. a Denny’s claiming “All our redneck customers are racist, so we need to hire only white servers” wouldn’t fly. But for a mortuary company serving a Jewish clientele to require Jewishness of its body handlers would be a classic example of a cultural BFOQ. Them demanding their receptionist or bookkeeper\* be Jewish would be a classic example of somebody overreaching a BFOQ to the level of prohibited bigotry. \*spell check made that into “beekeeper” before I caught it. Which somehow struck me really funny. I think that’d be a great line at a cocktail party: “Hey **LSLGuy** , what do you do? I’m the beekeeper at Jones’ Mortuary”. ---
**Author:** ![flatlined](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb9ed0/32.png) [@flatlined](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flatlined)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2014, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/75 "2014-06-07T23:09:58Z")
Ignorance fought again. Thank you **LSLGuy**. I was just hiring pizza makers/drivers and warehouse workers, the only thing I worried about was if they would show up on time, do their jobs and not steal. While its possible that a Jewish or Muslim cook would refuse to handle the sausage, it never came up for me. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2014, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/76 "2014-06-08T01:23:23Z")
> [@flatlined](#): > > … edited to mention that if strip joints really did have 50% male workers, they would probably have more female customers. At the rrisk of continuing the hijack … I lived in Vegas for many years. Chippendales night was always very popular with the ladies. But somehow I think it wouldn’t play well in other, shall we say, less freewheeling towns. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and all that. And it seems to work a lot better as a separate gig vice doing it as mixed company. Girls seem to like to go to events like that, but not to be seen by other unknown-to-them men while enjoying same. Likewise I think most hetero male strip club patrons would be less than enthused to see especially buff & well-hung men on stage for half the time they paid to be in the club. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2014, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/77 "2014-06-08T03:38:04Z")
Mae Hong Son province in northern Thailand built a new provincial hospital in the 1990s, and on one trip up there the wife and I walked past it. The hospital morgue in back had a big sign in English that read: “Deadly Check-Out.” We could only assume this is where relatives collected the body. I took a photo of it that ended up appearing the “Travellers’ Tales” section of the _Far Eastern Economic Review_. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2014, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/78 "2014-06-08T12:29:12Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > … > > Pretty sure that in most Western jurisdictions, the State’s compelling interest in ruling out murder/criminal negligence and improving safety trumps religious qualms. Or a deranged widow’s compelling interest to sue you–meaning me–after your best friend kills himself, said widow requesting to not have the autopsy, me bringing the document to the morgue, request granted by the State, and said widow later deciding that it was all Prozac’s fault and wanting to sue Pfizer, but unable to so without evidence of Prozac level from corpse which was claimed would’ve been available from autopsy, and that I falsely obtained permission from her. And it came to trial. Not a fun time, at all. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2014, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/79 "2014-06-08T14:01:27Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > I don’t know if that is true about Jewish Orthodoxy, although it might be. > > A chevra kadisha (see the references there), will do their stuff for anyone known to the community, or for any Jew a family or hospital asks for. (Bad grammar…) > > When my father-in-law died of cancer in the hospital, two (three?) guys came in, wrapped him lickety-split and he was out the door. From there (the topic of OP), I have no idea. I think in some areas it wouldn’t be practical to wait for either the chevra kadisha or the family to arrive, though. I don’t mean at nursing homes (obviously, given the thread title), but in hospitals. If someone died during surgery, for example, they’re hardly going to leave the body there for several hours while waiting for someone Jewish to arrive, and they’re not going to push them through the corridors uncovered and with their wounds on show. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2014, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/80 "2014-06-08T14:10:40Z")
> [@jabiru](#): > > I worked in Ward 13 as well. 😃 Who didn’t. I met my wife on C shift on 12. She was impressed because when I turned up I climbed in through the window. Did you do many shifts in Fraser Unit? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354.md?page=5)