A hearse is a vehicle. History of a hearse

There are topics that are unpleasant to think about. Nevertheless, at any moment they can touch each of us. One of them is the organization of a funeral. All services related to them are provided by funeral bureaus: from documents to the deceased's transportation to the cemetery.

For transportation, as a rule, a hearse is used. This vehicle, having appeared many centuries ago, changed along with human civilization. And once the technological progress has transformed the ancient funerary chariot into a modern autocar.

When the hearse appeared

This may seem surprising, but the history of a hearse goes back to the Ancient World. The preserved bas-reliefs give an idea of how the first vehicles for the transportation of the deceased looked.

Of course, it was about rulers and noblemen. Their catafalques were a stretcher with a lush canopy mounted on a chariot.

In the Middle Ages the hearse is no longer the privilege of the nobility. Then the expensive stretchers were finally superseded by horse carriages - transport, available to almost all social classes.

In the XIX century, funeral carriages drawn by horses were widely spread . Thus, depending on the wealth, relatives of the deceased could choose between a simple cart and a more prestigious crew. The latter were decorated with carvings, plumes, velvet and gilding.

Writers today

With the advent of cars, much has changed. In place of the ritual horse-drawn carriages came autokarafalki. By 1920, only in the United States, between 30 and 40 companies were engaged in the manufacture of funeral transport.

Today, in the view of many of us, a hearse is a car specially designed to transport a coffin to a cemetery. Nevertheless, explanatory dictionaries treat this concept a bit wider.

According to them, the meaning of the word "hearse" is not limited to a vehicle. In addition, it means, for example, the elevation for the coffin in the room where the funeral service is held, and also the stand on which the coffin is moved.