Death in England: an illustrated history

In charting changing attitudes towards death in England from Neolithic times to the present, this collection of essays addresses many themes relevant to medical history. Some of these are already well known, such as the gradual medicalization of death during the twentieth century. Others are less well known, such as the importance of the doctor's role in ensuring a "good death". But whatever aspect of medicine one may be interested in-doctorpatient relationships, the interface between medicine and religion, or public health-this book will be a fascinating source of information on the history of death. In ten chronologically organized chapters, the volume investigates various themes associated with the public manifestation of death and the social practices surrounding it. In so far as their sources allow, the twelve authors examine attitudes towards the "art of dying", what constituted a "good" or "bad" death, and how these perceptions were informed by religious beliefs in the afterlife. They investigate the public and private processes of grieving, how the body was prepared for burial, and how the burial itself was undertaken. In exploring these themes, each author is sensitive to the changing intellectual and religious background, class differences, and the practical limitations of space, time and money that affected ways of dying. The book is particularly fascinating for the variety of approaches it adopts. In part, this is determined by the sources. Thus the first two chapters-dealing with death in the Neolithic, Bronze, Iron and Roman Ages-are written by archaeologists who draw their conclusions from gravesites and their contents. The authors are scrupulous in pointing out that surviving gravesites are not always representative of popular attitudes to death, and that only the most general inferences can be made regarding ancient beliefs in the afterlife. The survival of Roman tombstone inscriptions from England and elsewhere certainly improves the situation. But one is still left wondering how far we can go, beyond mere description of material objects, before we are in the realm of speculation. Chapter 3-dealing with death in the period 400-1150-is curious in that it deals first with pagan Saxon and Viking attitudes to death using mainly archaeological evidence, and then it turns to Christian practices during the same period using surviving written records. The contrast is stark. The written documents give a much richer picture, at least of beliefs if not practices, and provide a valuable tool for interpreting iconographic and other material evidence for early Christian perceptions of death. Chapters 4 to 10 rely upon more obviously historical rather than archaeological sources, but here again an interesting variety of approaches is adopted. For example, Chapter 10 (covering the period 1918-98) relies upon changing mortality rates to emphasize the importance of medicine and public health for modem attitudes to death. Chapter 9 (1850-1918), by contrast, uses visual images to illuminate how different the Victorian way of dying