MOURNING MUMMERIES.

Observer, Volume XVI, Issue 925, 3 October 1896, Page 7

MOURNING MUMMERIES.

The Funeral Farce

We are glad to see from a Christchurch contemporary that one New Woman has been courageous enough to raise her voice in condemnation of the existing slavish conventionalities demanded by society. Mrs Dr Ryder, the American lady doctor, made some sensible remarks in the Canterbury capital the other day on the sabject of cremation and of the silly funeral and mourning customs of the day. She informed her hearers that ' doctors agree that burial in the ground was unhygienic. Cemeteries were a menace and a danger to the living. As thoughtful, intelligent beings, it was the duty of New Zealand women to advocate cremation. The outlay of money on tombstones and the cußtom of dressing small children in mourning were concessions to pride and prejudice and fashion that should be- done away with.' As for cremation, it is bound to come. Sentimentality cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the sanitary requirements of this utilitarian age. The tombstone and hole in the ground must go. But, why not go further, and abolish all the silly and unreasonable mourning customs (and costumes) of to-day? Why should it be considered necessary for ns to exhibit onr grief for the departed by wearing clothes of a particular colour, or material, or shape ? And why should it be necessary for the journey to the grave to be made in hideous black carriages, with a ridiculous affair covered with bunches of black feathers, to convey the remains to their last resting-place, leading the way ? When cremation is generally practised it will sweep away such solemn tomfooleries as these, and inaugurate, let us hope, an era of common sense in all matters pertaining to the dead. As a contemporary pertinently says, many a poor bereaved wife or mother spends the last pound she has in complying with customs fitter to be practised by ignorant savages than by civilised human beings, lest it should be thought she has not paid proper respect to the dead. What rubbish it all does seem ! It is curious, as well as ridiculous, that so many foolish and utterly unnecessary customs should obtain in these enlightened days whenever we put a friend or a relative tinder the ground. One would imagine [ that, after all we hear in church and profess to believe, the friends of the dear departed ought to be jolly glad to know that their loved one's spirit is where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. But, on the contrary, they act and speak as if they were quite certain the deceased had gone to the other place where the worm dieth, according to the scriptural tradition, and accordingly they look as sad as -.they I can for a certain length of time, and wear the most mournful-hued garments, and won't go to the theatre, and use black edged envelopes, until, apparently, they are convinced that the deceased has finished his purgatorial probation and has flown to somewhat happier realms. If we were a barbarous heathen, and learned of our funeral customs, and then returned to our fellow-niggers, we think that would be the impression we would have of the way the enlightened white man mourns. Why, for instance, should a widow conBider it her sad duty to wear black for yearß after her husband's death, or daughters for a twelvemonth after a father's or a brothers's demise? Young i widows, we know, are not unattractive at times in their willows and weeds, but the crape of the mourner is the most hideous and unbeautiful thing that we have ever seen. The truth seems to be that woman ib so conservative in all matters of custom, and is so bound by slavish precedent and by the fear of what Mrs Grundy will say, that she won't give up her mournful crape. There are a score of other hateful habits bound up with what is ignorantly called ' showing respect ' to the dead, but the ridiculous 'dress regulations' are the worst of the lot. Here is abundant room for reform . Let some of our ambitious Women's Leaguers, eager to set the world to rightß, take up this one subject, and they will find plenty of material in it for their revolutionary inclinations.