[Anna] Welcome! My name is Anna, I'm the Curator of the Mütter Museum and the Director of
the Mütter Research Institute. And I have with me my friend, Caitlin Doughty, mortician,
best-selling author, bonvivant, woman around town. And she has graciously offered to come
here to my, well "immaculate" is not the right word for this office, to my office and we're
going to have a little fun. I'm gonna show Caitlin a couple of objects that I think she
probably knows a little bit about, and then I'm gonna show you a couple things you might
not know about. And we're just gonna have fun, see how it goes!
[Music]
[Anna] First thing, right off the bat, what is it? [Caitlin] I believe this is a coffin, not a casket because
a casket would be rectangular. But a coffin is anthropoidal, I believe is the word, which
means basically it's human-shaped, body-shaped, so it's tapered at the bottom and gets bigger
where the human gets bigger, and then comes back in a little bit at the head. But this
was early 20th century? [Anna[ Yeah, the coffin could span a large time period, but we think
that's roughly the time period, could be a little earlier, could be a little bit later,
but probably not too much later. But there's a little something different about this coffin.
It's not just your traditional coffin and maybe there's a couple of clues, I'm not gonna
tell you what there is, but what's maybe special about this coffin, that's a little different?
[Caitlin] Well, it's taller than a normal coffin, it has a viewing window, which there
is a mummified body in here--no, there's not. [Anna] There's not, we took it out.
[Caitlin] Yeah, it's on display in the Mütter Museum. But there is a window and there is something--
oh yeah, you can see there's something that lifts up the bottom to about here, which means
that there's something going on beneath here. But beyond that, you'll have to explain it to me.
[Anna] Well, I think you got all the things right and there was a reason for all of this.
I mean, obviously the window her is to view in, and actually that portion underneath here,
that wicker, that was a space to put ice because this is not a coffin that you would be buried in.
This is, I think you would call it a "display coffin," a "viewing coffin," maybe even a "wake coffin."
I don't know if there's a proper term. [Caitlin] Yeah, well I know that what was very popular
was having something called a "cooling board," which the funeral director would bring to the home.
And you would put ice underneath the person, but you wouldn't put the person directly on the ice,
it was sort of a contraption that you put underneath the person,
so it looks like what this is, which is fascinating,
is a viewing coffin where the cooling board was built in to the bottom. And then you could
put the person in and then look at their little face from the top here. And I say "little face,"
this is a small person. [Anna] Yeah, I mean people were a little bit smaller back
in the day, you know, but this could be for a juvenile, it could've been just for an adult
of slight build, I think it doesn't really matter as long as you fit in the coffin so
that you could go in there. But I think that you totally said it, that this is not a coffin
that was a one-use coffin. This saw multiple people in it because it was meant to be used
for just a specific period of time, just for maybe a couple hours, maybe a couple days,
I mean depending on your culture, wakes and viewing lasted different amounts of time.
[Caitlin] We actually have something very similar today called a "rental casket," that is sort of the same principle.
[Anna] Is there cooling? [Caitlin] There's not cooling in it,
but the idea actually is that, especially if you're having a cremation, you might just
be in the cardboard cremation container and the rental casket actually opens up in the back,
and you can slide the entire cardboard container into the casket,
and then hide it by putting the nice sides down.
[Anna] Yeah, but that's good because it's an extra layer of protection.
[Caitlin] It's an extra layer of protection, and then you can pull it out and put it directly into the cremation machine.
But the idea is that you don't have to cremate a casket every time you have a viewing.
[Anna] And that's wonderful, yeah, so the same thing.
You might not even have been able to afford a coffin as nice as this. I mean,
it might look plain, but it is very sturdily built, it has nice moldings, it's made of a nice
hard wood, and so this was not to be buried in, this was to be shown in. So there we go.
So there's different types of coffins. [Caitlin] The big wake-out.
[Anna] Well, this was definitely a wake-up call for me. [Caitlin] Well, wake me up before you go-go
into those puns again, Anna. [Anna] Sorry.
[Caitlin] The Doughty and Dhody Show!