Britain’s “obesity epidemic” is beginning to affect all sorts of different industries in a variety of ways, from hospitals which now need to provide wider beds, to putting bigger seats on airplanes. As almost all members of society come into contact with a funeral director at the end of their life, this means obesity is now starting to have an inevitable impact on the funeral profession.
How obesity affects funerals
The main concern of any funeral director when dealing with a client who was overweight will be to see that the funeral can still proceed with the same level of dignity and respect as that of any other customer.
In order to ensure this happens, a number of different innovations have steadily emerged within the funeral industry (mostly from America) which are designed to ensure that the client’s weight doesn’t cause any element of the funeral service to become undignified. These include:
- Larger coffins and caskets – Until recent decades, the average coffin was typically 22 to 24 inches wide, but now 26 inches has become much more common, with larger ones (typically up to 40 inches) also available. Having a wider coffin enables the deceased’s family to imagine them lying in comfort when they reach their final resting place, and is necessary in some cases to ensure that the coffin can be closed properly before the funeral.
- More powerful crematoria – As the bodies of overweight people contain more fat, they need to be burned for longer and at higher temperatures in order to be turned into ash. More powerful ovens with larger doors have been pioneered in America, but at the moment there are still only a few of them in municipal crematoria around the UK (Lanarkshire in Scotland, Lewisham and King’s Lynn are where some of them can be found). This has led to cases of funeral parties having to travel hundreds of miles in order to lay their loved one to rest, adding considerable expense and distress to what is already an upsetting time.
- Lifting equipment – Just the coffin on its own can weigh several stone, so the combined weight of that and a large passenger inside it can become too heavy for traditional pallbearers to carry on their shoulders. Indeed, some funeral directors may have to refuse to provide a pallbearing service if they could be held liable for putting their employees at risk of, for example, back injury. In place of pallbearers, a growing number of funeral directors now use trolleys to wheel the coffin into the funeral venue, while they can also use sophisticated lifting and winching equipment to lower the deceased into their grave during burials.
- Funeral transport – Unfortunately, some hearses may not be able to accommodate the larger sizes of coffins and caskets, meaning that alternative methods of transport have to be found. A good funeral director will provide advice on these. Extreme options, recently taken, include the use of an open-top horse-drawn cart.
These innovations have all been designed with the best intentions, to ensure that any deceased person may be buried with maximum dignity, regardless of size. Funeral directors conform to a high standard of professionalism, and should be able to explain, with clarity and tact, anything that needs to be done specifically because of the deceased’s size.
With 25% of Britain’s adult population now thought to be obese, and three-quarters overweight, the funeral profession will have to continue adapting to deal with larger clients for the foreseeable future.
