ABSTRACT
An alternative tide might have been ‘Lancashire ways of death’ because there were variations in customs between different families. Some of these differences were related to religious denomination, for example only Roman Catholic families mention praying for the dead. There was only one family in the sample who did not pay death insurance for each family member and who suffered the indignity of the mother having a pauper’s funeral. The money was usually paid through a large industrial insurance company but sometimes through a small, locally organized death or funeral club. Different rituals and different procedures were followed at different stages from the person’s death to the long aftermath of the funeral. Each appears to have had a different function and a different significance. It is important to understand the part played by death in the socialization of working-class children.
