Comments on: Sarah Wheatcroft: Service for the Dead

By: Michelle Glauser

Michelle Glauser — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:06:18 +0000

What an interesting story.

By: m&m

m&m — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:21:47 +0000

Well, then, Ardis, thank you for helping us connect with these dear saints, for telling their stories and helping us learn more about pieces of Mormon history that we would be otherwise (very, very) unlikely to find.

And I have to admit that I’m rooting for you to find out more about the other Sarah.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:19:47 +0000

Some of them do astonish me, m&m. But you know, with a post like this where you can guess I’ve become emotionally attached to a long-ago brother or sister, comments that simply join in the recognition of these people as fellow Saints can be the best of all.

(I confess to getting just as teary-eyed, just as glad to find the people I write about here as I do when I can add someone to my own family tree. I need to know that readers share that feeling.)

By: m&m

m&m — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:17:06 +0000

Thanks for this, Ardis.

And it IS interesting to see what your smart, history-minded commenters (unlike me, who just has to be content to sit back and gawk at the smartness) bring to the table, too.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:55:57 +0000

Sure, Mark, why not? I’ll run it past the IRS man who doesn’t think my laptop is a necessary business expense.

By: Mark B.

Mark B. — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:32:22 +0000

Does that mean I can write off the costs of the trip to the UK as a business expense? Even if it was fun?

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:18:40 +0000

Thanks, Mark — I love those lines from the Book of Common Prayer, too. Whatever an elder might have said over Sarah’s grave would probably have carried the same substance, but could hardly have been any more beautiful than those words.

As for the resurrection trade, I am continually amazed by the twisty paths of our conversations and the arcane knowledge displayed by various commenters. That was fun!

By: Mark B.

Mark B. — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:46:05 +0000

A tour guide in Edinburgh introduced me to Messrs Burke and Hare, infamous “resurrectionists” of of that city in the early 19th century, and the laws that led them into their line of business. Until the Anatomy Act of 1832, the only bodies available for dissection in the United Kingdom were those of people condemned to death and dissection in the criminal courts. Since medical training required more bodies than the courts were providing, grave robbing became a lucrative business. Burke and Hare apparently decided to move from grave robbing to murder, so they could get fresher bodies to their purchasers, having cut out the middlemen (the undertaker, clergyman and gravedigger).

After the 1832 act, the grave-robbing business in the U.K. went into terminal decline–in fact, the business went belly-up, six feet under. Which supports Ardis’s “guess” about Elder Pratt’s comment.

By: Mark B.

Mark B. — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:38:42 +0000

It’s interesting that the law required that burial be permitted in the churchyard, despite her having converted to another faith.

I wonder if it’s because that was the only public burial ground in the parish, or because she was christened in the Church of England and therefore entitled to burial despite her later departure from that faith?

But, we’ll leave that puzzle to the legal historians. Meanwhile, this is great stuff, Ardis!

(And, in my humble opinion, so is the the burial service in the Book of Common Prayer. The final lines, probably familiar to me from burial scenes in old western movies, seem a fitting way to end a service:

FORASMUCH as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to receive unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed: we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our mortal body, that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:17:24 +0000

I think — just guessing — that he didn’t mean either grave robbing or poor oversight by the incumbent, but only that a formal burial ground like the churchyard at St. Thomas was as safe a place as could be found where a grave would be undisturbed until the resurrection day — if Sarah had been buried outside the churchyard (could people conduct private burials in home gardens in Britain, the way they could in much of the U.S. at this time?) without the reverence accorded to a churchyard, the grave stood a good chance of eventually being disturbed by construction or farming or anything else.

The slam about avarice, I think, is about the custom of having to pay the minister for conducting the funeral.

But I’m only guessing because that seems the simplest explanation.