| Description | Receipted accounts of successive undertakers employed by the Hospital, recording large numbers of funerals, from one inmate to about 20. Names are invariably given, and ages from 1757 to 1762 and in 1764. Funerals were normally very simple, occasionally more elaborate; and James Duplessis senior in 1743 (see H/E/2/17) had the full treatment with mourning cloaks and gloves, a silk scarf for the doctor, the best velvet pall, a hearse and two coaches, etc. In July 1763 there is a bill concerning a coroner's inquest, with payment for 'the jury's drinking'. From about 1750 there is occasionally no charge against a name, but a note 'paid by his friends', i.e. his family. From 1777 to 1788 there are handsome engraved bill-heads showing mutes, armorial hatchments, etc. |