Death announcements in the paper - who was BU?

[GraceMarks]

Sorry for a slightly morbid topic, but I recently had an experience where the mother of a friend of mine died unexpectedly and she and her sisters had to suddenly sort out all the various arrangements for the funeral and notifying banks, utility providers, etc etc. It was a very stressful time with an awful lot to think about.

A couple of weeks later, I was talking to my own mum and she happened to mention that she had been "looking out for the death announcement" in the local paper, but hadn't seen one and wondered if my friend knew that this was something that people are supposed to do. I asked my mum why she actually needed to see a death announcement at all, given that she already knew that my friend's mother had died, and surely anyone who is particularly interested or who knows the person who has died would have found out through friends, family etc. She got a bit huffy then and muttered something about tradition and etiquette. She seemed to be implying that my friend had made a kind of faux-pas by not announcing her mum's death, on top of all the other things she had to sort out.

Is this really something people still do, or is my mum being hopelessly old-fashioned? Just wondering what the norm is where other people come from!

I didn’t bother with the London Gazette for probate, neither of my parents were ever in debt to anyone, it just wasn’t necessary. I didn’t pay a solicitor thousands to administer two very simple estates either.

I wouldn't bother, people who I wanted to tell would get a phone call. The rest don't matter.

TBH I think that is a pretty horrible attitude. Funerals are for the living, to grieve the dead. And I don't think anyone has the right to decide who has the right to remember and grieve someone.

And I don't think anyone has the right to decide who has the right to remember and grieve someone.

This is very much the attitude in Ireland and people here would be appalled at the idea of controlling a kind of ‘invite list’.

But my understanding is that parts of the UK would be very different culturally.

I didn't do this for my dad, though he did it for my mum. He died over two years ago, can I do it retrospectively ;) I think I looked into it and it was several hundred pounds so I can see that being a good reason why it's not done routinely.

My dad had a 'death dot doc' document with everyone I needed to contact after his death, so I just followed that. Very organised man, much missed :)

Jo

It's a choice

FWIW

Family friends complained to an undertaker about both the announcement and the wording of it, in very difficult circumstances as it had been done against their wishes

My English friends find it hilarious that my elderly parents, when they got their first computer (in their mid-70s, deeply non-tech-savvy) asked me to come over and set rip.ie as their home page. But they still also always look at 'the deaths' in the local paper and make a point of telling me every time we talk who's dead that week.

Also, not having newspaper death announcements deprives readers of a major source of comedy, like the notorious announcement in our local paper years ago, where the qualifications of all the adult children and grandchildren of the deceased person were listed eg

'Sadly missed by daughters Bernadette (PhD, MSt, BSc) and Angela (DMus, HDip), sons Padraig (BComm, MSc) and Tadhg (BEng, LLM), and grandsons Fionn (BArch, BCL, PGCE) and Daithí (BA. MBA, LittD).'

I'm fairly sure that they considered including the Leaving Cert results of the grandchildren who were too young to have any letters after their name.

I am half Irish living in the UK

I much prefer the Irish approach to death

We did have one in the paper of the area my dad grew up in, and as a result heard from one or two people who knew dad when he was younger.

We placed one in the London Gazette and sure enough the DWP sent us a letter to say that they would be checking that DM had not received too much pension credit that we would have to pay back, luckily she hadn’t. I think that was the reason it had to go in there as DM had received many years of pension credit. I’m not sure if the Heir Hunters use it , I think it is mainly the DWP

I don't think it's an Irish / English thing (although Ireland seems tons better in that there is not a really long wait between a person dying and their funeral, England needs to get that sorted) or an old young thing, either, the person I am mourning has friends in their 90s. Her death was never put on social media, it's not an either/or situation. In England you have enough time to call if that is what you prefer. It was a comfort to us to be able to tell people and to hear from them about their memories. It was not necessary to put anything in the paper had we wanted to, or had it been her wish, that would be different, of course.

Good manners and etiquette are two entirely separate things. One is about grave: it means treating others with respect and civility; it doesn't discriminate; it applies to everyone. The other is about being a conformist, often insisting that others should be seen to do likewise, or else risk being sneered at as a pleb. It's rigid, exclusionary, and it lacks grace. Etiquette is often bad manners in itself. (Preparing to be flamed by all the 'traditional' and formal wedding adherents).

Re funeral announcements: the funeral directors did this as part of the service and I think this varies to quite a degree depending upon the location.

Your mum isn't being unreasonable by holding these views; she's entitled to adhere to whatever customs she wishes when they relate to her personally. But it would be the height of 'unreasonableness' to try to foist those views on grieving people.

That should have said 'grace', by the way, not grave. An entirely unintended typo but unfortunate given the circumstances. Sorry.

Unless the deceased expressed a clear wish for their death notice not to go in the local paper while they were still living then I think it is very much the norm in the UK and I suspect that it is still the main way that many people of a certain age (60+) find out that people they know (who are not family or very close friends) have died.

The surviving family are unlikely to have contact details for all the deceased's present and past friends, ex colleagues, acquaintances, neighbours etc

Sorry, but I think you are, in this case OP. Maybe you don't read newspapers or know this but it is one of the main steps you do in preparing for a funeral or even a memorial service. Not so much a death notice, but a Funeral Notice. Even today's generation. It is the most basic thing to do. Funeral/burial/crematorial/memorial directors normally do this (at least where I am) and they come around to discuss coffin type/size, burial/cremated and ask you about how many newspapers you want the funeral notice to be in, and the wording. I wasn't aware any could/would do a funeral/memorial service without a funeral notice. How would anyone know? Normally family are grieving and don't have the presence of mind to let everyone who knew the deceased know. HENCE the entire reason funeral notices exist, in the first place. So friends/former colleagues etc know.

It is simple common courtesy and one of the basic first steps of a service. I really am struggling to understand how you didn't know this?

Why is everyone focussing on Ireland?

Also, No one seems to have mentioned the cost. Apparently it can be up to £300 to place a funeral notice.

Of course you can do a funeral without putting it in the paper. What an odd idea. It's a free country, people get to choose and the only thing you need is the death certificate. It's bad enough when somebody dies without adding on obligatory extras. I've personally never seen a notice of somebody I know, though unfortunately have attended quite a few funerals.

They aren't - Irish posters have commented how different the entire system is so it's hard to compare

LunafortJest alright, no need to so inexplicably furious about it. If you'd read the full thread, you would see that a lot of people chose not to have a notice for a variety of reasons. Also, it wasn't me that was bereaved, it was my friend - I was just surprised that such attitudes still exist. It is obviously not a standard thing to do for everyone, and that's not necessarily wrong. People deal with bereavement in different ways.

In the context of the cost of a funeral, the cost of a death announcement is peanuts.

Very common here too....

Once upon a time it was customary to put things in as my late MIL called it "the hatched,matched and dispatched" section of the local rag but times have moved on,newspaper sales in general have declined massively and the newspapers rely on paid advertising on their website/social media pages otherwise they wouldn't be able to fund themselves based only on newspaper sales.I think your friends are right and obituaries in newspapers aren't common anymore

Normally family are grieving and don't have the presence of mind to let everyone who knew the deceased know.

Yes this.

Even the deceased themselves may not necessarily know everyone who would like to pay their respects.

Most people do it so that the local community know as there may be people who knew the person and would like to pay their respect that don't know the extended family.

Funnily enough was having a similar conversation with my Mum (late 60s). She was saying that she sent some much older friends in the 80s/90s Christmas Cards but hadn’t heard back from some of them and she was wondering if some of them had died. But as no one puts notices in newspapers anymore or goes through their parents address books to notify people, she wouldn’t know if they’d died. To be honest it wouldn’t even occur to me. I’d shove something on Facebook and hope word travelled.