DURING this terrible pandemic, many things have changed — not least our attitude towards funerals. There has been an increase in an centuries-old ritual: the horse-drawn hearse. Deborah Smith, of the National Association of Funeral Directors, confirms that the numbers of horse-drawn funerals increased during Covid: “Families are looking for something more personalised.” But it goes deeper than that, and it has changed my whole attitude to what makes for a good send-off.
One undertaker in my area reports an increase in horse-drawn funerals. She tells me that, on one day, they organised six horse-drawn funerals. Yes, six. She loves the horses, she tells me. “They get here a few hours early, and I love feeding them hay and watching them being groomed; they are very peaceful. They are always as good as gold.”
THE horse-drawn funeral and glass-windowed carriage with the coffin in view seems positively Victorian — from a time when the theatre of funerals was part and parcel of understanding death. Adrian, a funeral director, tells me: “It takes you back to the way my grandfather used to do things. The horses, they really look the part. You can’t beat an old horse-drawn hearse.”
You can get electric-powered eco-hearses these days, but the horse belongs to a time when death was much more of a daily reality than even today. Of course, there is a slight catch: back in the 19th century, the horse-drawn funeral was a status symbol, well beyond the pocket of the ordinary family (it would have cost five years of wages for a regular labourer). The more ostrich plumes attached to a horse’s head, the richer you were. The working classes tended to dispatch their dead on a small wooden cart.
I speak to John Harris, who is the fourth-generation family member of T. Cribb & Sons Undertakers, based in the East End of London, the epicentre of the horse-drawn funeral. He tells me that horses and funerals nearly parted company for good after the Second World War. The horses used are beautiful big black Belgian Friesians. During the war, they nearly died out — either eaten for food or cruelly treated and worked to death by the Nazi occupiers. They became a rare breed. It was Cribb’s that had a hand in reviving the tradition.
SLOWLY, things began to change, and there is still a demand for horse-drawn funerals (even if we account for some of this because of the general increase in deaths). But my feeling is that the horse-drawn funeral is much more profound than we might think. I conducted a funeral last week, and I must admit that I was feeling very low. I have never found taking funerals easy. I was struck, as I came out, by just how much I would miss Derek, who had been such a big part of my congregation. I was also moved by the dignified grief of his family.
As I came out of the side door of the crematorium, I found myself standing near the next funeral and the horses that had pulled the Victorian glass carriage. The coffin and mourners had gone in, and it was just me and an undertaker and four big beautiful black horses, adorned with plumes. I was overcome by the peacefulness of the animals, their quiet dignity. They looked beautiful, and, every time I speak to an undertaker about them, they tell me that the horses, oddly, humanise things, bringing overwhelming spiritual experiences to a manageable scale.
An undertaker friend in Glasgow tells me: “They are really elegant, and that’s important to people.” In a period that seems so brutal, an elegance in our last journey is surely much appreciated. One undertaker tells me that the “temptation is simply to cremate people and then collect the ashes”. But the slow passage of the horse-drawn hearse is a stand against that.
Another undertaker tells me: “I’ve been around horses and horse-drawn funerals since I was a boy, and I’ve worked for this firm with my family for decades; but, each time I see the horses, I am in awe of them. They just have something kind and slow about them. We live in a fast-paced, throwaway world, and it’s tempting to do quick funerals.”
Horses don’t go fast: thank God, they don’t gallop to the crem. They remind me of my own creatureliness, of my own short span here, and that I need to stop rushing around.
Some unlikely celebrities have chosen the horse-hearse as their final transport choice. The godfather of punk music, Malcolm McLaren, was carted to Highgate cemetery by horses, after he died in 2010. My family are East-Enders. It is a community that has an affinity for the old funeral ways. When I die, I want a horse-drawn funeral, no question.
The Revd Steve Morris is a priest in the Church of England, and a writer and journalist.