ABSTRACT
Death was one of the major subjects to occupy pioneers of the sentiments approach, providing a focus for investigating the strength and nature of relationships. The period between death and burial was short. Burials are seen as a reliable guide to actual mortality, since it is a process that cannot long be avoided and it is fortunate for English historians that they have access to large numbers of parish burial registers from the early sixteenth century. Like marriage, burial thus remained a public event; however, Puritan desires to limit the pomp of elaborate ceremonies reduced participation, particularly from the mid-seventeenth century. In the nineteenth century, rapid population expansion meant that the infrastructure of death came close to collapse as it became grimly impossible to fit large numbers of bodies into parish churches and churchyards. Suicide provided one of the most intractable forms of death.
