Is lying in state a closed coffin?

[GreenGreenGrassBlue]

I’m from a country where all our funerals are open coffin so we follow that culture here too and bring the body home for family and friends to visit. I’m assuming it’s a closed coffin due to the number of days for the Queen?

🙂For a Yankee Anglophile like me (and there are millions more) recording Royal weddings and funerals won't do. Even though California is 8 hours behind Britain, watching the proceedings happen live is a must. ✌🇦🇽🇺🇸💙❤

A glass 'view-top' wouldn't be a bad idea, but nobody knows how well a corpse will present after death. I personally don't believe it would be disrespectful. Justification would be the result of one's intent. In the U.S. we have open-casket 'viewings/visitation' before a funeral, except under undue circumstances such as disfigurement.

Keep in-mind that the Queen's casket, nor any latter-generation's royal remains, are buried. Phillip has been on a shelf, waiting for QE II to kick-it, so they can be slipped into a granite crypt, side-by-side, that would cost more than your house ;) They're all placed in (most probably granite) crypts/vaults. They're all the pretty decorations you see under most European cathedrals and churches.

I can agree with you. It IS literally 'history in the making'. You can't say "I was there", but you can say "I watched it as it was happening." I have work interviews on the 19th, so I have to bet on them first ;)

Although a very sad and solemn day, take in the pomp & circumstance as much as you can! It won't be long before the world is run by bankers that own dime-store-diners!

Open or closed casket is up to the family's discretion (and condition of the body), at least in the U.S. In my young 60 years, every funeral has been preceded by a 'viewing', which was an open casket. A 4th-grade classmate was the only exception. A 7th-grade classmate had an open-casket viewing.

The casket will have the Royal Standard draped over it. It will also have the Imperial Crown placed, centered over the casket. There will not be 'bits and pieces' of jewelry spread about. I believe there 'may' be a ceremonial saber as well, since she was in the Army during WWII.

Bullshit! Your response is easily scientifically proven FALSE!

Embalming only replaces the blood, and collapsed/excised organs from a corpse. There is NO Process to prevent decomposition, except possibly suspension in liquid Nitrogen. ANY process that has O2 present will allow decomposition.

Another response was "Formaldehyde". That's not a just response!

Modern chemistry, has advanced the science of Mortuary Science! I encourage you to Google & read-up on "The Body Farm", University of Tennessee. There's incredible information to learn, from/by incredible scientists. The FBI uses MUCH of its information & material to solve both old and modern crimes.

There will be the Imperial State Crown and the orb and sceptre as symbols of monarchy, as there were for George VI (who also had military service during WW1) What goes on the coffin reflects the highest ranks held in life.

Every passed person I have visited in a funeral home has been in an open casket. The casket can only be open for so long though.
My friend was having her Nana’s & Mum’s coffins open when they were coming to rest at home before the funeral but due to covid & waiting times it was too late to do that by the time they could bring them home.
I think it is more of a personal choice in the UK.
I imagine time that has passed is a big factor in this case, possibly security & also the family wanting people to remember the late Queen as she was could also be the reason she has a closed coffin while sitting in State for those who wish to to visit her before she is buried.
I imagine the time they spent with her she was in an open casket.
I just wish I was well enough to go visit her. Was so tempted to drive to Edinburgh when I picked child up from school yesterday but I’d not be able to stand for 12hrs normally so after the drive I’d be totally stuffed on that front. Then we would have nowhere to rest after that time spent standing & I would then have to drive home to get child ready for school before 8am.

I think that most open-coffin wakes, funerals etc are where you are going to bury the body really soon after death (OR rely on undertaker fridges). I had a shock in my teens at my Portuguese grandmother's funeral, two days after she died. I wasn't expecting to 'see' her and nobody had thought to warn me.

The Queen is obviously embalmed but as others have said, in a lead-lined coffin (I read somewhere that Diana's weighed about a quarter of a ton - imagine hoisting something like that as pall-bearers and knowing that whatever happened you mustn't slip or stagger!). But lead-lined coffins make me shudder. Embalmed or not, bodies buried in a properly sealed coffin don't deteriorate in the way a body in a generic organic coffin does. They eventually turn into a horrible soup. I remember reading about how archaeologists excavating one of the largest graveyards in London (Spittalfields??) had to wear PPE and some of them had counselling because it was so horrific.

I loathe crematoriums because it's all so soulless and those curtains really freak me out, so I think I'd prefer to be buried, but in as little as possible and preferably under a tree that can use me!

i think open caskets are seen as catholic by many

so not the done thing if you are not catholic (it’s not that long ago there was still a huge divide in the country)

The open casket experiences I shared were variously Kirk, Wee Free, pagan, atheist. Not Catholic.

I'm Presbyterian. It's very much the done thing amongst my friends and family.

Fascinating thread. I was a small child when my paternal grandfather died suddenly, and I have very vague snippets of memories of my mother being horrified about my grandmother wanting my grandfather to be in the dining room visited by the family. I wonder if it was an open casket. C of E family, but not church going or very religious at all. My grandmother’s grandfather was Irish though; he came over to England during the famine of the 1840s, so I wonder if it was a hangover of how she remembered things being done in her youth, perhaps. I only found out recently about the Irish ancestry (through researching my family tree), nothing was ever mentioned.

I've only once been to an open coffin ceremony once and that was to the funeral of a West Indian colleague . It was a surprisingly cheerful event with many people speaking about him. A lot of family had travelled a long way and many posed for photographs with the deceased. My friends and I declined the chance to view him, no one minded either way, it was a huge affair.The whole experience was very raw,especially at the burial, where we took it in turns to cover the coffin with earth.This part was quite social though,with lots of chat and singing.
It's true I am very squeamish despite being 73 and having lost all the older members of my family by now.The only dead person I have seen was my 2 week old grandson,at the hospital. We held him in turn and rocked him,as if to sleep.
It may not be all that common in my tradition ( Church of England) to have the deceased at home,but this hasn't always been the case, and there is always the option of seeing them at the Chapel of rest. I'm sure there are all kinds of options,just my experience. I think my RC family members are not much different. Quite a reserved lot!

On the subject of Her Majesty, in my experience of state and other big funerals in the UK,from Winston Churchill
to any members of the Royal family,
lying in state has been closed coffin.I don't believe the Queen would have liked anything else.

From what I understand...the coffin is sealed. Odour is unlikely.

Here in Canada, it's common for a casket to be open. It isn't mandatory, it's more/less preference. Of course if it were the deceased's wish that the coffin
be closed, then that's what happens. Sometimes the body dictates if a coffin
should be open or closed. The deceased may have been in a horrific car accident or whatever. Usually in these cases, the funeral director will do his/her best cosmetically, the family can view the deceased to see if the cosmetics
lessen the look of the injury, & if not satisfied, they instruct the funeral director to close the coffin. When my Mom passed away, Dad wanted her on view. So,
Mom was on view, open coffin of course. People paying their respects could
see Mom for the last time. She was very ill at the time of her death, but one would not know it when they viewed her. On the day of the funeral, the coffin
was closed. Mom's remains were cremated. When Dad passed, he was cremated as I was out of the country at the time of his death.
It's quite common in North America to have open coffins, but again it is not
mandatory.

I don't think we will ever know for certain if the remainder of the Royal Family did spend time with the late Her Majesty as she lie in an open coffin. I don't think she would want such a thing, but again; we may never know for certain.

Viewing the deceased at the Undertakers is down to personal choice. Some want to see them to get closure and acceptance. Some prefer to remember them as alive only.

There's no right or wrong way. There are cultural expectations and conventions sure, but personal choice must take precedence.

I agree. It's pathetic

When I was widowed, I was alone with him and closed his eyes. One of his children was able to say goodbye. Due to one of the things wrong when he died, he couldn't be embalmed and there was a gap before the funeral. I had also given permission for a medical post mortem.

I made the decision that no one was going to see him in the chapel of rest (don't actually think anyone wanted to, but could be wrong) I knew him and how much he would have hated, loathed, being viewed under those circumstances and have zero regrets. The undertakers told me later that I had made the right decision. However, I went to an open casket funeral weeks after he died, very much part of a religious tradition and it was beautiful, deeply moving. Everyone has to do what's best in the circumstances they find themselves in and as has been said above, there is no right or wrong way.

I do think we should be able to talk about things like this more openly, because in some ways the Victorians had more sense and ease about the one thing that ultimately affects us all.

100 years ago my English, C of E, grandad made coffins. Burial was usual then but that has changed and now cremation is much more likely. Nowadays there is usually a huge wait for a time 'at the crem' but in the days of burials a grave could soon be dug.
He would have measured the body and arranged for the body to be laid out at the home of the dead person. There wouldn't have been central heating in those days. Bodies could be lying in a room, with a sheet over, until he had made the coffin and took it and lifted the body in. I expect he put the lid on, but so that any family or friends who wanted to see the dead person could just lift it off, so in that sense it would have been 'an open casket'. After a while he would have 'screwed the lid down' so it couldn't be lifted off any more.
I, also, think there are some odd attitudes in Britain but most homes are warm so bodies can't stay there for long now, and I have seen coffins being made, which not all people have! People have become used to funeral directors whisking the bodies away to keep them refrigerated in case someone wants to see the dead person during that huge wait for the cremation date.
Personally I think that seeing the person is a step in the mourning but that might not be for everyone. I hope that if any members of the Royal Family or household wanted to see the Queen in her coffin they have been able to.
This is an interesting thread with posters talking about different customs.
I saw a funeral in the Middle East. The coffin was open, carried in first and followed by men mourners. I truly can't remember whether women followed the men or not.

My grandad was open coffin in my grannies living room the day before his funeral. The undertaker came just before the funeral, popped the lid on and the family followed the funeral car to the church. This was early 90s in the UK. Never seen it done that way since, maybe people don’t like the idea of sleeping in a house with a dead body in the living room nowadays 😂

In the 50's it was common on my road to have the coffin in the front room until the ceremony. The lid was on but not screwed down until it was taken for the service, so those who wanted to could have viewed the body.
Hopefully the royals will not allow the open view as I'm afraid many of our public can't be trusted anymore. Who would have thought she would have been boo'd in Scotland by some as she passed by.

Was Diana buried in a vault/chamber kind of thing or does she have a traditional outdoor/underground grave?