I know people are embalmed. However, what other preservation is used when they’re put on display for extended periods?
Is the display box cooled?
Are the bodies put back in the morgue fridge at night?
It wouldn’t be appropriate if there was a noticable smell as people in the receiving line walk by.
If the body was in an open casket, it needs to look fresh.
Apparently the Queen’s coffin is lined with lead to preserve the remains, and she was embalmed. The coffin reportedly weighs up to 700 lbs.
And no, we don’t generally have open coffins in this country.
In any case, for these sorts of occasions, the coffin is not only closed, it’s covered with the appropriate flag and with the symbols of the person’s authority placed on top.
I don’t think smell is a big problem, especially since the body is normally embalmed.
I’m barely old enough to remember the deceased being placed in the front parlor. People came by to see the person and there was a wake afterwords.
There was also the obligatory coffin pitcures. My grandmother had a photo album with several of my deceased relatives.
I was 4 or 5? At the time.
It used to be very common.
Modern embalming techniques remove the need for such things. Embalming alone is sufficient to prevent odor (well, maybe not if you went right up to the corpse and sniffed deeply - you’d probably smell the embalming fluid) and decay for quite some time, particularly in a temperate as opposed to tropical climate. Combine that with a closed coffin that’s further draped and it’s not a problem.
In the bad old days before embalming that was part of the reason for all the flowers - to cover the smell as someone lay in state for awhile. Spices and other scents might also be employed.
I think the curiosity from this side of the Atlantic is more about the duration of time between death and the actual funeral, combined with 11 days at room temperature. That’s pretty far out from the usual US procedure of having the funeral within about 5-7 days at the most.
I guess if the lead lining is soldered shut very thoroughly, it doesn’t really matter what happens within it, as macabre as that sounds.
11 days is a long time. The Queen had people with her and would have gone directly to a mortuary after death.
That’s better than someone found a day or two after death.
I understand that gases of decay can explode the coffin. But embalming should prevent that for the relevant time frame.
(I personally find the idea of embalming to be extremely disturbing. But i guess it makes sense in cases like this )
Lincoln was assassinated April 14 and was entombed May 4, a span of 20 days. He had an open coffin for the multitudes to look upon his body at the many stops that his funeral train took. The flowers probably helped with any odor, but there was marked deterioration of his appearance (Lincoln and embalming).
Lenin, Mao Tse-tung and Kim Il Sung are apparently preserved with some sort of process where the body is also waxed(?), and on display in a mausoleum. I saw Mao a few years ago and he looked pretty good for someone dead several decades. They had a gizmo, IIRC, that would raise him up into a glass viewing case during the day and lower him into a refrigerated case for the night.
This discusses some of the preservation techniques:
Western press once years ago reported that there were some problems with Kim’s process and he was deteriorating. One newspaper said his ear had fallen off at one point.
One may check with ones locale for the legalities, however there may be the possibility that one can be boxed up unembalmed if there is no viewing and one goes straight from point of death to undertaker to grave.
Personally mrAru and I are donating whatever [he and I can’t do organ donation because of health issues but we can provide amusement for anatomy students] and no viewing, simple cremation, packing into a TDU can and sea burial over an abyssal.
In many/most locations in the US you don’t have to be embalmed, even if you are having a funeral - although for aesthetic reasons best not to delay burial in that case.
I’ve been to a number of Jewish funerals, who do not embalm for religious reasons. They also don’t do open caskets, either. Burials are generally within 24 hours of death, but there’s also usually funeral in there, too. Muslims also do not embalm and also bury quickly. If cremation is the choice then embalming is silly, and given the highly toxic nature of embalming fluids could pose hazards to those doing the cremating or people downwind so very much not needed or wanted there.
There are quite a few funeral directors who will tell you embalming is required, not the least because they make money from the procedure. While it may be legally required if transporting a body across state lines in most instances embalming is actually optional.
The bodies of deceased popes are not completely embalmed, with some interesting results:
his body also decomposed significantly before burial. Accounts from the time describe his corpse turning “emerald green” and stolid Swiss Guards fainting from the smell.
After two days on public display in the August heat, the body began to putrefy.
Yeah, I’ve mostly been to Jewish funerals, and my understanding is that they never embalm the body. Of course, they also never show the body, so i suppose i wouldn’t know for sure. That does mean you need to bury the body fairly promptly, but in these days of refrigeration, even that isn’t critical.
My MIL died during the first peak of covid deaths in NYC. We had her cremated, but it took weeks before she got a slot in the ovens, because there were so many bodies to be dealt with. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t embalmed in the meantime. NY was using the same refrigerator trucks that are normally used to ship food to store bodies, i think.
“Request permission to shoot trash, sir!”
At least some airlines have a corporate policy of requiring bodies to be embalmed. But I am not aware of any law that requires it.
Ask a Mortician has a ten-minute video on the efforts the Russian nee Soviet governments have exerted keeping Lenin’s body more or less looking good.
As with so many things in the US it varies by state, it’s not (apparently) a Federal statute. See here. Airlines making it a rule probably makes it more convenient for them, and eliminates the risk of accidentally breaking a state law.
Only Alabama and Alaska make it a firm law, five others require it when moving a body by “common carrier”. It is not always required, depending on state(s) and transport. If I recall correctly, the chief pilot in this accident was not embalmed when transported for a funeral on a private airplane between Kentucky and Indiana.. After a Hindu funeral he was cremated and his ashes taken back to India by his parents. So it’s not always required, but likely with commercial carriers often required.
People probably don’t want to know how often there are deceased passengers in the cargo hold of passenger airlines. It’s not like the folks downstairs would be making a lot of noise, right?
I am so sorry. That’s very sad to read. Those were some dark days indeed…