ANTIQUE THERMOMETER SMITH MORTURARY UNDERTAKER MORTICIAN FUNERAL HOME PARLOR VTG

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VINTAGE / ANTIQUE

WALL MOUNT THERMOMETER

"SMITH FUNERAL HOME"

THREE DIGIT PHONE NUMBERS ENDED IN 1905

SO... THIS ITEM IS PRIOR TO OKLAHOMA STATEHOOD

IT - INDIAN TERRITORY

PHONE NUMBER 136

"AMBULANCE"

SUSPECT FROM DRUMRIGHT OR SAPULPA

MEASURES ABOUT 12" X 4"

SOME BROWN COLORATION OVER THE PIECE

MAY BE CLEANED BUT WE HAVE NOT ATTEMPTED

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FYI 

 

 

A funeral director, also known as an undertaker (British English) or mortician (American English), is a professional involved in the business of funeral rites. These tasks often entail the embalming and burial or cremation of the dead, as well as the arrangements for the funeral ceremony (although not the directing and conducting of the funeral itself unless clergy are not present). Funeral directors may at times be asked to perform tasks such as dressing (in garments usually suitable for daily wear), casketing (placing the corpse in the coffin), and cossetting (applying any sort of cosmetic or substance to the best viewable areas of the corpse for the purpose of enhancing its appearance). A funeral director may work at a funeral home or be an independent employee.

Etymology: The term mortician is derived from the Roman word mort- (“death”) + -ician. In 1895, the trade magazine The Embalmers' Monthly put out a call for a new name for the profession in the US to distance itself from the title undertaker, a term that was then perceived to have been tarnished by its association with death. The term Mortician was the winning entry.

History: As the societal need to account for the dead and their survivors is as ancient as civilization itself, death care is among the world's oldest professions. Ancient Egypt is a probable pioneer in supporting full-time morticians; intentional mummification began c. 2600 BC, with the best-preserved mummies dating to c. 1570 to 1075 BC. Specialized priests spent 70 full days on a single corpse. Only royalty, nobility and wealthy commoners could afford the service, considered an essential part of accessing eternal life.

Across successive cultures, religion remained a prime motive for securing a body against decay and/or arranging burial in a planned manner; some considered the fate of departed souls to be fixed and unchangeable (e.g., ancient Mesopotamia) and considered care for a grave to be more important than the actual burial.

In ancient Rome, wealthy individuals trusted family to care for their corpse, but funeral rites would feature professional mourners: most often actresses who would announce the presence of the funeral procession by wailing loudly. Other paid actors would don the masks of ancestors and recreate their personalities, dramatizing the exploits of their departed scion. These purely ceremonial undertakers of the day nonetheless had great religious and societal impact; a larger number of actors indicated greater power and wealth for the deceased and their family.

Modern ideas about proper preservation of the dead for the benefit of the living arose in the European Age of Enlightenment. Dutch scientist Frederik Ruysch's work attracted the attention of royalty and legitimized postmortem anatomy. Most importantly, Ruysch developed injected substances and waxes that could penetrate the smallest vessels of the body and seal them against decay.

Historically, from ancient Egypt to Greece and Rome to the early United States, women typically did all of the preparation of dead bodies. They were called "Layers out of the dead". Mid nineteenth century, gender roles within funeral service in the United States began to change. Late nineteenth century it became a male dominated industry with the development of Funeral Directors, which changed the funeral industry both locally and nationally.

A funeral home, funeral parlor or mortuary, is a business that provides burial and funeral services for the dead and their families. These services may include a prepared wake and funeral, and the provision of a chapel for the funeral.

Services

Funeral homes arrange services in accordance with the wishes of surviving friends and families. The funeral home often takes care of the necessary paperwork, permits, and other details, such as making arrangements with the cemetery, and providing obituaries to the news media.

There are a few common types of services in North America. A traditional funeral service consists of a viewing (sometimes referred to as a visitation), a funeral service in a place of worship or the funeral home chapel and a graveside committal service. Direct cremation consists of the funeral home receiving the corpse, preparing it for the crematory and filing the necessary legal paperwork. Direct/immediate burial is the forgoing of a funeral ceremony for a prompt, simple burial. Moving a corpse between mortuaries involves preparing it for shipment in a coffin strapped into an arbitrary or a combination unit. This is common when it is to be buried in a different locality than where the person died.

When a corpse is brought to a funeral home, it is sometimes embalmed to delay decomposition. The procedure typically involves replacing the blood with a mixture of preservative chemicals and dyes, aspirating the internal organs and setting the facial features. Makeup is used to make the face and hands look more lifelike. If the face or hands were disfigured by accident, illness or decomposition, the embalmer may utilize restorative techniques to make them presentable for an "open casket" service. If this isn't possible, or the family wishes, the funeral home can perform a "closed casket" service.

The funeral home often sets aside one or more large areas for people to gather at a visitation. This area may contain a space to display the body in a casket to visitors who may pay their respects. Funeral and memorial services may also take place at the funeral home. Many funeral homes offer prearrangement options for those who wish to prepare their own funerals.

Several large multi-national corporations in this service field have received exposure from high profile litigation. The Loewen Group, Inc., received a particularly large jury verdict in the State of Mississippi which was later found to be in error as the allegations against Loewen Group proved false. The Canadian based company then brought suit against the United States alleging violations under N.A.F.T.A.. Houston based Service Corporation International has also had their share of legal troubles with the operations of both their funeral home and cemetery operations.

In 2011, the total funeral homes revenue in the United States was $13.6 billion.

A funeral director, also known as a mortician or undertaker, is a professional involved in the business of funeral rites. These tasks often entail the embalming and burial or cremation of the dead, as well as the planning and arrangement of the actual funeral ceremony. Funeral directors may at times be asked to perform tasks such as dressing (in garments usually suitable for daily wear), casketing (placing the human body in the container), and cossetting (applying any sort of cosmetic or substance to the viewable areas of the person for the purpose of enhancing appearances).

Role in the United States

In the US, most modern day funeral homes are run as family businesses. The majority of morticians work in these small, independent family run funeral homes. The owner usually hires two or three other morticians to help them. Often, this hired help is in the family, perpetuating the family's ownership. Other firms that were family-owned have been acquired and are operated by large corporations such as Service Corporation International, though such homes usually trade under their pre-acquisition names.

Most funeral homes have one or more viewing rooms, a preparation room for embalming, a chapel, and a casket selection room. They usually have a hearse for transportation of bodies, a flower car, and limousines. They also normally sell caskets and urns.

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Funeral Service Industry

The ubiquity of death has required people and institutions specializing in the handling of dead bodies and the supervision of rituals and activities connected with death. In Chicago, as in most cities, much of this work has been performed by undertakers and funeral directors, most of whom have operated relatively small businesses, often associated with particular religious or ethnic groups. The Chicago area is historically distinctive, however, in the sense that it has been a national center of the funeral service industry since that industry started to become more specialized and professionalized in the late nineteenth century.

During the city's first decades, Chicago families who required undertaking services often dealt with people for whom the funeral business was only a part-time affair. Starting in the 1830s, cemeteries were created around the city. These were staffed by men such as Henry Gherkin, a Prussian immigrant who was one of the first gravediggers in Chicago. During the period between the time of death and the time of burial, many Chicago families turned to undertakers, many of whom operated livery stables or other businesses when they were not handling the dead. As late as the 1880s, local undertakers such as Patrick Dingan, Charles Burmeister, and A. B. Russ engaged in a variety of businesses besides selling caskets and providing funeral services.

Chicago's growing population supported the emergence during the late nineteenth century of more specialized funeral service businesses, which formed associations to enhance their standing and authority. The professionalization of the American funeral service industry, which coincided with the rise of public health regulatory activity during the late nineteenth century, was led by many individuals and institutions from Chicago. In 1868, the city's undertakers created a local group called the Chicago Association of Undertakers; this group sponsored the Illinois School of Embalming, which opened in Chicago in 1884. Other schools dedicated to “mortuary science” and the training of funeral service industry workers opened in the area over the following decades. By 1920, embalmers in Illinois were tested and licensed by the state. At the same time, many of the industry's national associations were headquartered in Chicago and nearby Evanston. The National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association, the descendant of a group formed in the early 1880s, settled in Chicago. Both the National Negro Funeral Directors Association and the Jewish Funeral Directors of America were led by Chicagoans and chartered in Illinois in the 1920s and 1930s. For much of the twentieth century, Evanston was home to the headquarters of groups such as the Casket Manufacturers Association of America (founded 1912), National Selected Morticians (1917), the National Foundation of Funeral Service (1945), and Monument Builders of North America (1906).

The movement toward specialization and professionalization in the funeral service industry, though enhancing the authority of funeral directors and other specialists, did not mean that the business became standardized and homogeneous. In fact, providers of funeral services with strong ties to particular localities or ethnic groups continued to serve many Chicago families throughout the twentieth century, just as they had in earlier years. By the 1920s, African American entrepreneurs such as Daniel M. Jackson and Robert A. Cole ran large and successful funeral parlor and funeral insurance businesses that served thousands of customers on the South Side and beyond. Mortuaries moved with ethnic populations from the city to the suburbs. Even the rise of national chains in the funeral service industry did not necessarily reduce the segmentation of the business along ethnic or religious lines. At the end of the twentieth century, for instance, Lloyd Mandel Levayah Funerals (based in Skokie ), introduced a national chain of discount funeral service franchises, some of which were designed especially to handle the needs of Jewish families.

The constancy of death makes undertaking a relatively stable business, and several hundred funeral service businesses have been operating in the Chicago area at any given time for most of the last century. The industry has become somewhat more concentrated over time, but small-scale firms were still abundant through the end of the twentieth century. In the late 1940s, there were over 700 funeral service establishments in the metropolitan area. By the early 1990s, some 440 firms with an average of five employees each were doing a combined business of about $250 million a year.

 

 

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