Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory

To prevent decomposition while the body remained at home, innovations like vinegar-soaked cloths and tubs of ice beneath the corpse were developed in the nineteenth century. During the wake there was food to be consumed, alcohol to be imbibed, and a sense of releasing the dead person from their place in the community. As Gary Laderman, scholar of American death traditions, put it, “Although the body had lost the spark that animated it, deeply rooted social conventions demanded that it be given proper respect and care from the living.”


During the wake, a wooden coffin was constructed either by the family or perhaps a local cabinetmaker. The hexagonal coffin was tapered at the bottom, indicating this was indeed a container for a dead human, unlike today’s rebrand of both the shape (a plain rectangle) and the name (casket). After several days had passed, the corpse was placed in the coffin and carried on the shoulders of family members to a nearby grave.

By the mid-nineteenth century bigger, industrial cities like New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston became large enough to support death industries. Unlike farms or small towns, large cities maintained specialized trades. Undertaking emerged as a profession, though the job entailed little more than selling funeral props and decorations. The local undertaker might build you a coffin, rent you a hearse or funeral carriage, or sell you mourning clothes or jewelry. They often took other jobs to supplement their income, leading to some amusing nineteenth-century ads: “John Jensen: Undertaker, Tooth Puller, Lamp Lighter, Frame Builder, Blacksmith, Cabinetmaker.”

Then came the American Civil War, the deadliest war in United States history. The Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, holds the dubious honor of having been the Civil War’s (and American history’s) single bloodiest day, during which 23,000 men died on the battlefield, their maggot-ridden corpses bloated amidst the equally bloated bodies of horses and mules. When the 137th Pennsylvania Regiment arrived four days later, its leader requested that his men be allowed to consume liquor as they buried the bodies, there being only one state in which it was possible to do the job: drunk.

During the four years of battles between the North and South, many of the soldiers’ families had no way to retrieve their dead sons and husbands from the battlefields. The corpses could be transported on trains, but after a few days in the Southern summer heat, the dead entered the deepest throes of decomposition. The smell emanating from a body left in the sun would have been far worse than a mere olfactory inconvenience.

According to the account of a doctor for the Union army, “during the battle of Vicksburg the two sides called for a brief armistice because of the stench of corpses disintegrating in the hot sun.” Transporting bodies hundreds of miles in this odious condition was a nightmare for train conductors, even the most patriotic among them. Railroads began refusing to transport bodies not sealed in expensive iron coffins—not a viable option for most families.

The situation brought out the entrepreneurial impulses of men, who, if a family could pay, would perform a new preservative procedure called embalming—right there on the battlefield. They followed the skirmishes and battles looking for work, America’s first ambulance chasers. Competition was fierce, with stories of embalmers burning down one another’s tents and placing advertisements in local papers reading, “Bodies Embalmed by Us NEVER TURN BLACK.” To market the effectiveness of their services, the embalmers would display real preserved bodies they had plucked from the unknown dead, propping the corpses up on their feet outside the tents to better demonstrate their talents.