There is a reason a funeral director will fork out over 70,000 for a hearse. Reliability aside, however, certain mishaps are unavoidable.
"If you have a puncture and you’re in transit with a family there’s nothing you can do. You just have to get out and fix it," as one undertaker put it. He went on to relate the widely told story of the hearse that broke down outside a pub. "What happened? The wife said ‘well, it’s appropriate because he spent all his time there anyway’."
John Phelan, an undertaker from Stratford-on-Slaney, Co Wicklow, surely found fresh faith in modern technology when his Granada burst into flames en route to Naas Hospital last December. Newly acquired the hearse may have been, but it was 21-years-old and had 100,000 miles on the clock. Leaping from the vehicle outside Brannockstown, Co Kildare, Mr Phelan (75) managed to rescue both his wife and an empty coffin before the fire brigade arrived to douse the pyre.
Some undertakers nevertheless enjoy the classic cars, despite their antique safety features. "The older ones are items of beauty," says Willie Doyle from Kilcoole, Co Wicklow. He should know - his 1965 Wolseley starred in Angelica Houston’s film Agnes Browne. "The one with the guys jumping out of it is mine," he says. "You get calls like that for film. There’s a guy who works with Ardmore and he’ll ring me and say we’re doing something based in the late-1960s and we’ll pull it out of cold storage."
Adventurous funeral directors, of course, are taking something of a risk in a profession where clients tend to think conservatively. Ernie Donelan, the west Cork undertaker who converted his taxi into a hearse by cutting a hole in the back, got it right. He transformed a simple taxi business into Ernest Donelan & Son, Complete Funeral Service and Car Hire Service.
A Co Wexford business was not so successful. A silver hearse recently presented itself at a funeral home there. Business was promptly lost because customers thought it was the only colour available. The funeral director also had a black hearse, of course, and it’s common knowledge in the trade that silver hearses are easier to clean. It mattered little. The offending vehicle was quickly re-sprayed.
Hollywood? Silver paint? Posthumous transport in Ireland was not always so glamorous. In 1829 Sanders’ Newsletter reported that, so well had body-snatching and steam shipping routes combined, "resurrectionism for export" was threatening Dublin medical schools with a body famine.
Chief among the culprits was William Rae, a half-pay surgeon working in Irishtown, Co Dublin. Dispatching his macabre cargo to Glasgow in cases consigned as Irish Cheddar, Rae never failed to have a "respectably dressed female" accompany deliveries.