ABSTRACT
The last words of the dying have been recorded for centuries in diaries, histories, funeral sermons, letters, biographies, fiction and, as in the present case, memoirs and obituaries. The published accounts of evangelical Nonconformist deathbed experiences in mid-nineteenth-century England were a curious mixture of the familiar and the innovative; the formulaic and the authentic; the last words of the dying and the interpretation of those in attendance; the mystical and the practical; a scene of final conflict and one of peaceful deliverance. In some respects, they were a faithful reflection of characteristics of a ‘good death’ as recorded since the fifteenth century. In others, they introduced new features that were the fruit of the Evangelical Revival and suited to their place in the industrialised, modern world. This chapter will consider the experience of the dying that is described primarily in the fourth part of the four-fold obituary formula – the death narrative. Careful consideration will be given to its relative consistency or modification with the passing years, with special attention accorded to the ways in which the experience of the dying person differed from that of the observers of the death and to what extent there was continuity between the deathbed piety of the nineteenth-century evangelical Nonconformists and that of previous centuries.
