Funeral homes and mortuary science, California 1926

[supercrook]

I've got a character who is a mortician in 1926, in Los Angeles, California. By all accounts in what I've been able to stir up via Google, the whole funeral home/funeral parlor business was still somewhat new, or at least not as set in stone as it would later become in the '50s/'60s in the US, and most of the information I've been able to find on

Comments

[badgermirlacca]

Try looking up http://www.ipipub.com/nfdma/. There's also an article at http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1964/4/17/morticians-journal-tells-of-unfortunate-romance/.

[orange_fell]

What part of Los Angeles?

[supercrook]

I'd imagine that changes a lot -- unfortunately this is for a game with a pretty vague setup, so I can't give you a definitive answer. How did things generally map out by region, if that's not a massively complex question?

[orange_fell]

It really is pretty complex! I recommend the book "Southern California: An Island on the Land" by Carey McWilliams for information about what LA and other communities were like during the period. It's not exactly recent, but it's extremely well-researched and also fun

[ffutures]

Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One (1947) is a satirical look at the business which might be helpful

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Loved_One

And of course the TV show Six Feet Under is a modern look at it.