About Jeff "Rusty" HendersonStatistics:
Strength: 8 Constitution: 11 Dexterity: 7 Size: 12 Intelligence: 16 Power: 11 Appearance: 9 Education: 16 HP: 12
Occupational Skills
Art: Cosmetology 20% (5 + 15)
Hobby Skills
Conceal 20% (15 + 5)
Other Skills
Firearms
Biography:
Jeff "Rusty" Henderson comes from a long-line of morticians. Apprenticed to his father at an early age, the boy gained a deep-set fascination with corpses. This fascination would turn to a small obsession years later, when a chemical accident took the life of his parents and heavily wounded him. Unable to do the finer work required of him while he recovered and unskilled with taking care of finances, his family's mortuary was soon seized and Jeff left homeless. He started doing menial jobs and later started drifting from place to place, his hands never having fully healed, and earned the nickname "Rusty" from vagabonds such as himself when he expressed dismay over a bit of rust that had accumulated on his surgical tools. Still interested in the preservation and restoration of corpses, Rusty continued studying, sometimes dabbling in occult texts, finding much time to himself without regular work.
Notes:
http://lafd.org.uk/funeral-service-in-london-a-short-history http://local.aaca.org/bntc/slang/slang.htm http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/timeline/1920-1929 Older Notes:
More commonly called undertaking with the mortician as the undertaker. Dangerous preserving chemicals like mercury and arsenic. The blood is drained and the veins and arteries are filled with chemicals. The body is made up to look presentable and reconstruction is done, if needed. Mostly customer service. Reconstruction of the body. Funeral arrangements. Psychology/Psychoanalysis for grief counseling, customer service, etc. Biological science and cosmetology for reconstruction. Administration and social skills for funeral arrangements. Home funerals - In the 1870s, the remains were prepared in the home, where the wake also was held. To that end, most embalming equipment was portable. A folding cooling table, on which undertakers would place the remains of the deceased to prepare for embalming — right in the house in which the person had died. In some parts/later(?) the actual funeral would usually be held in a church, but everything else occurred right in people’s homes. Funeral directors of the time had to bring everything with them. Family more involved in the process. The embalming kit. All the various injector needles, pumps and draining devices fit perfectly into the big case. Very long steel draining tube, every injector needle, every hand pump and glass jar tucked neatly away in a large, brown leather case. Containers of preserving chemicals. infant and child mortality was much, much higher in Victorian times than it is today the effects of the urbanisation and industrialization of Great Britain and its effect on public health and the funeral industry which was then in its infancy. By the early nineteenth century, disposing of the dead in Britain had come to crisis point. Increased urbanisation, ever-present disease and the limited amount of consecrated land had led to vastly overcrowded churchyards, burial grounds and private chapels, the dead left to rot at the surface or dug up again and burned to make room for the next paying customer. the development of the private cemeteries, the final push in the mid-nineteenth century for state intervention in burial practises, and the decline of cemeteries and increase in the number of those cremated. the change in attitude to death during this period, from something both hideous and expensive, to a necessity which could be made quite beautiful, and then to the beginnings of our own extreme antipathy to what must come to us all. Another addition to the coffin’s interior was usually a bell of some sort. Due to the contagious nature of diseases like small pox, cholera and diphtheria as well as the misdiagnosis of comas for death, unfortunately many people were actually buried alive in the Victorian age. Therefore, as a means of forestalling a not quite dead person’s burial, the installation of bells in coffins became de rigeuer. hairwork jewelery (brooches, bracelets, watch chains, and earrings, with a hair of the deceased inside), reminders of deceased, wearing their jewelry, death masks postmortem photography of the deceased While the fashion code for mourners was quite detailed and extreme, the rules were quite the opposite for dressing the deceased. The remains of a man were usually “clad in his habit as he lived.” A woman’s remains however, were usually dressed in a white robe and cap while children were dressed in white cashmere robes. As for the casket, it was usually made of hardwood or cast iron especially if the deceased died from a highly contagious disease such as diphtheria or cholera. Typically, the coffin itself would remain plain on the outside save for a swath of black cloth while the inside was usually satin lined. Where funerals had previously been arranged between the family and the church, the increasing pomp of funerals required some serious stage management. The undertaker emerged from being a side-line job of the local carpenter or job-master (who hired out horses) to presiding over and directing these displays. Elaborate hearses were constructed, replete with black horses, ostrich feathers and flowers. Mourners, known as Mutes were employed to follow the coffin looking suitably despondent and feasts were prepared for assembled friends and family. Indeed funerals became so expensive that many parents saved up for the likely death of one or more of their children. A ‘respectable funeral’ was now closely entwined with its cash value and pageantry. Many lower class persons planned ahead and saved money for their children’s funerals because the mortality rate was so high. They wanted to ensure that if their children did not survive, they would still be able to have a grand funeral for them. By saving money for funerals, they often deprived their families of the necessary comforts of living. Mourning cards were another tradition. These were supplied by the undertaker. They were printed in black and silver on white, and were embossed with traditional symbols of grief such as an inverted torch, a weeping willow, a shrouded urn or kneeling female mourners. These cards were mounted on ornamental memorial-card mounts. They were intended as reminders of the dead so that the recipient would be sure to offer prayers for the deceased. The card contained the name and age of the dead person as well as the date and place of burial. A body was always carried out of the house feet first, so that the spirit of the dead couldn’t look back into the house and beckon family members to follow. Many Victorian superstitions about death. Stop the clock in a death room or you will have bad luck. If you smell roses when no one is around, someone is going to die. If a picture falls off a wall, there will be a death of someone you know. If a sparrow lands on a piano, someone in the home will die. A single snowdrop growing in the garden foretells death. If you see yourself in a dream, your death will follow. Since our consignment to heaven or hell was to be decided at the hour of death, the ‘good death’ became increasingly significant. Early Victorians idealised the notion of an end slow enough to give the dying the chance to say goodbye to their families and to prepare themselves spiritually for this all important moment. Families would cluster around bedsides, hoping to catch profound last words of their loved ones or witness religious raptures before death. by the late Victorian period people had largely discarded these notions, hoping instead for quick, painless deaths over melodramatic, drawn out affairs. a person must first wait to receive their formal written invitation. (It was not proper however, to send invitations to a funeral of a person who died from a contagious disease. In this case, there would just be a simple notice of death posted in the local paper with the simple phrase “funeral private” and all would be understood.) Funeral guests were then expected to arrive precisely an hour before the service was to begin. Upon entering the funeral parlor or house of the deceased, men were expected to remove their hats and not “replace them again while in the house.” Loud talking and laughter were also strictly forbidden and “interviews with the family at the time should not be expected.” Thanks to Queen Victoria who turned mourning into an art form unto itself, mourning the dead in the Victorian age became a very strict and formal occasion with a great many rules and regulations.When a person initially died, so began the mourning process. Curtains were immediately drawn, clocks were stopped at the time of death and mirrors were covered because of the superstition that the spirit of the deceased could become trapped in the reflective glass. Mourning periods were divided into two time frames: deep mourning and half mourning. A widow was expected to mourn her husband for at least two years during which time she was expected to wear black at all times with her only social agenda being at church. Parents who lost a child were in deep mourning for nine months and half mourning for three months. Children who lost their parents mourned for the same amount of time. The death of a sibling required three months of deep mourning and three months of half mourning. In-laws, aunts, uncles, cousins and other relatives all had mourning periods that ranged from six weeks to six months. At a time when there was little to no standards for sanitation, the burial of the deceased occurred in churchyards many of which in were in the middle of small towns. Over time the churchyards became so overflowing with dead bodies that the surrounding neighborhoods became decidedly unhealthy. And while churchyards may seem to contain only a small number of gravestones, that was actually however, quite misleading. For example, a churchyard that was only 200 square feet (18.6 square meters) in length would in actuality contain sixty or seventy thousand bodies. Victorians planned for and feared their mortality, in Victorian Paris there were several night clubs that actually celebrated death. In the neighborhood of Montmartre, one could ponder their mortality in the aptly named Cabaret du Néant (The Cabaret of Nothingness).At this gothic nightspot, visitors were served by monks and funeral attendees who offered drinks named after diseases which were imbibed on top of coffins and caskets.At Cabaret de l’Enfer (The Cabaret of the Inferno), patrons would be greeted by a chorus of voices shouting “enter and be damned, the Evil One awaits you!” At this satanically themed nightclub, a half dozen devil musicians, both male and female, would be suspended in a caldron over a fire, playing selections from Faust as red imps stood with hot irons ready to prod those musicians who dared miss a beat. Throughout the room, other red imps would serve beverages or do somersaults as crevices in the walls would suddenly spew thick smoke and emit odors of volcanoes while flames would suddenly burst from clefts in the rocks. And of course, what would Hell be without Heaven so right next to The Cabaret of the Inferno stood the Cabaret du Ciel (The Cabaret of the Sky). At this heavenly themed bar, patrons were greeted by Dante and Father Time, served drinks by attractive ladies dressed as angels and were entertained by St. Peter himself. https://ancestrylibrary.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4668/~/victori an-death-rituals
http://thiseclecticlife.com/2012/10/06/death-and-dying-in-the-victorian-era -an-exhibit-on-display-at-the-bayless-selby-house/
The Victorian Undertaker by Trevor May
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