becoming a mortician, what one notices, and police handling of deaths and dead bodies

[pico_the_great]

Little Details, I have a set of questions I've put off asking because they are long and complicated and because I'd had to do massive amounts of research for them, and that, at this point, I can't progress without asking/knowing. AND SO I am moved to come to your world and of ye these questions three many, because please help.

SO.

My Questions

Comments

[stormwreath]

Just to mention: in many real-world European countries of the 17th and 18th centuries, it was actually illegal to conduct an autopsy, except in certain special cases. It was considered desecration of a corpse. Partly, this was due to the folk belief that on the Day of Judgement, people would be resurrected in their own bodies - and if those bodies had parts missing, they'd be forced to spend all eternity without them.

The result was that dissection of a human corpse was generally only permitted if the person had been sentenced to execution for a serious crime, and the judge specified that their body was to be dissected after death. That was considered a worse punishment than merely hanging them!

Such autopsies would be carried out for purposes of medical research, or to train surgeons: but not to establish the cause of death. That would be obvious: hanging (or decapitation, or whatever). By the late 18th century the demand from the medical profession for corpses was outstripping the number of executions, leading to the practice of 'body snatching' - criminal gangs digging up fresh corpses from graveyards and selling them to shady doctors.

None of the above rules out examining a corpse to determine the cause of death: that was done regularly. It was cutting the body open that was illegal.
In England in the late 17th century, parishes employed 'searchers' - usually old women - whose job it was to visit the scene of a death and determine the cause of death. Here's a contemporary description:

"The searchers hereupon (who are ancient matrons, sworn to their office) repair to the place where the dead corps lies, and by view of the same, and by other enquiries, they examine by what disease or casualty the corps died. Hereupon they make their report to the parish clerk". The report was then compiled and sent in to the government, who used the data to receive early warning of plagues and epidemics.

The undertaker would visit and see the body cleaned, dressed and laid in a coffin, and arrange a funeral. For wealthy families who expected a grand display, this might take two or three weeks to arrange. The body would be embalmed to preserve it. Poorer families who could not afford embalment still often left the corpse laid out for three or four days, while relatives, friends and neighbours came to pay their respects. Especially in hot weather this could get very unpleasant after a few days, and the bottom of the coffin was often lined with a layer of bran to soak up moisture. (Leaving the corpse unburied for a few days was also a precaution in case the person wasn't actually dead but merely in a coma; something the medical science of the day was quite bad at determining.)

[pico_the_great]

Thank you very much! Interesting about the searchers - I'll do more reading up on them. And for my world, I don't have that particular taboo from that angle - but I might have others, so I'll have to look into that as well. Thanks!