In “The Story of Service” by Jessica Mitford I noticed between the first couple paragraphs she shifted from talking about different early jobs like the undertaker, and the clergyman job. She went on to explaining how their jobs were back then verse now and how they have a much more bigger job now. She stated that in times before the undertaker would “place the corpse in the coffin, preserve the remains on ice, and getting a permit” with the listed prices for that time which were all under ten dollars. And she goes on talking about the difference in billing then and now. She stated that the undertaker “had yet to conceive of the value of personal service offered professionally for a fee”. Before they were charging $1.25 to place the corpse in the coffin. But now they offer more like “funeral handling like cars, a chapel, and other rooms which require building maintenance, insurance, taxes and licenses and depreciation as well as heat in the winter, cooling in the summer, light and water” (Mitford page 41). She went on to explaining the steps of embalming on page 44, starting with the draining of “Mr. Jones blood out of his veins and replacing them with embalming fluid that is pumped in through the arteries”. She sited from The Principles and Practices of Embalming saying that “every operator has a favorite injection and drainage point usually from either the carotid artery, or the femoral artery”. She goes on to explaining what the skin looks like between men, women, and children. Mitfords tackles the rest of the steps done to the body before the funeral service. She stated the correct and non correct terms that can and cannot be used by anyone affiliated with the mortuary. For example referring to the body as Mr or Mrs and not as “corpse”.
