ABSTRACT
There seems reason to believe that the movement in favour of funeral reform has at last been effectually started in Yorkshire. Very few persons, if any, would maintain that there is anything inherently appropriate to the occasions on which they are used, in mourning coaches, or that any honour is paid to a dead man either by the presence of a number of nodding plumes on the vehicle which conveys his body to its last resting-place, or by the fact of his surviving relatives appearing for a certain time after their bereavement in dress of a particular hue or material. Such customs are observed in most cases merely because they are customs, a departure from which might be supposed to indicate a want of affection or respect towards those who are gone. In order to bring about a general change, it is only necessary that a sufficient number of persons should abstain from these practices to make abstention not seem singular. The reform, moreover, will make the more rapid progress if promoted by those who set the fashion. We are, therefore, heartily glad to see that amongst more than 250 persons who, at the meeting of the York City and County Funeral and Mourning Reform Association on Thursday, were announced to have given in their adhesion to the principles and objects of the society, were several Peers and dignitaries of the Church, 1 besides a number of the professional and mercantile classes and of working men. If all those who have put down their names as sympathising with the movement have the courage and good sense to carry its theories into practice when, unhappily, the occasion for doing so arises, a nucleus of resistance to habits of extravagant and really unsuitable, if we may not say unseemly, display, will be formed in every class of society in the country. We hope and believe that the efforts thus made will win large and willing support, and if so, it will be no small credit to Yorkshire, which has always been in the van of political progress, to have taken the lead also in bringing about the greatly needed social reform of which we have been speaking. /380
