The owner
of the cloth said that she’d been told it had something to do with
mourning. Its black color did suggest
that it might be associated with funerals or mourning. That gave us a place to start. Our Director of Research, Terry Reimer, was
the one who finally identified it.
The ad gives a good indication as to the
use of a cooling table: “A Practical
Undertaker of long experience, submits this cooling board to the profession as
combining all the essential qualities to meet every requirement for the proper
care of dead bodies. The simplicity of
this Board recommends it over all others in the market, and its price places it
within reach of every Undertaker in the land.
It is manufactured of the very finest materials, nickel plated &c.”
In addition to the table with the cloth cover in the ad, also notice that there is a second table which is shown folded into a more portable size. There’s a good reason for these tables to be easily portable.
Funerals used to be held in people’s homes, with the viewing of the body being in the family’s parlor. Instead of transporting the body to a funeral home, the undertaker would travel to the family’s home, and he would need to bring his cooling table with him. The body would be placed on top of the cooling table, and blocks of ice would be placed underneath the table to cool and preserve the body. These tables often had small holes in the top to allow for better circulation of the cool air around the body. The cloth cover was draped over a frame which folded out from the table. Its purpose was to help keep the cooler air near the surface of the table. Reportedly, this method worked quite well to “refrigerate” and preserve the body.
I’ll
leave you with a little bit of related trivia.
The term “parlor” went out of fashion at about the same time that
funerals stopped being held in private residences. It was replaced by the term “living
room.” Evidently, the change occurred
because people didn’t want to be reminded of the former use of that particular
room!
Photos
courtesy of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, except where otherwise
noted.
My father died in 1969 and his viewing was in the "parlor" at his father's home in Greenwood, South Carolina. I guess old habits die hard in some sections of the country. My siblings and I had to sleep in the next room. I had nightmares for years!
ReplyDelete