Obituaries

“I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.”
Benjamin Franklin

The regular presence of the obituary page in the four daily British ‘broadsheet’(1) newspapers forms part of the popular mix of news, entertainment and culture that editors strive to produce each day for their readers. The obituary has been described as the first draft of history as well as a miniature biography (Scott, 2001). Others consider it as a key component in how we remember the dead, and thus how history develops (Walter, 2005, 2006). It also forms part of the collective memory (Fowler, 2005).

Little is known for certain about the origins of the British obituary and how it has developed and evolved (Starck, 2004: 1). There has also been only limited study of contemporary practice. Yet there have been attempts to interpret and analyse the meanings of obituaries, their style and their relevance.

The launch of the Independent newspaper in 1986, with its widespread use of imaginative photography and its appointment of antiquarian bookseller-turned-obituary editor James Fergusson, and the appointment of Hugh Massingberd to the obituary editor’s chair at the Daily Telegraph, both created opportunities that were seized upon by the respective editors of their two newspapers. But rather than take on each other, they were in fact taking on The Times‘s long-standing obituary page (Rutherford, 1999), which had long had the market to itself but had been underperforming with dull and dry biographical accounts of the recently departed rather than crisp assessments of their lives.

These developments are almost entirely unresearched (Starck 2006). There has also been very little quantitative analysis about who is included. What type of people? What profession? What education? What family relationships did they have? And if we ask who is included in a broadsheet obituary page and why, then the question must also be asked as to who is excluded and why.

Tim Bullamore is one of the most experienced obituary writers in the country. He has written for the Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Independent and The Guardian. In 2002 he was the first obituary writer to be shortlisted for the British Press Awards’ specialist writer of the year. He is a member of the International Obituary Writers Association and has presented papers at several of that organisation’s annual conferences. He also presented a paper on mass obituaries of ordinary people (in the wake of 9/11, the Bali bombs and 7/7) at DDD7 (Bullamore, 2005).

Over the coming months he will be investigating the history of the British newspaper obituary and, through analysis of printed obituaries and interviews with authors and editors, examining contemporary practice in this field. He will also be examining the appearance of obituary writers as subjects in literature.

Tim Bullamore can be contacted at tim@bullamore.co.uk

References
Bullamore, T (2005) Obituaries of ordinary lives: a post 9/11 tradition. Paper to the DDD7 conference, University of Bath
Fowler, B (2005) Collective Memory and Forgetting: components for a study of obituaries. Theory, Culture & Society, Vol 22, No 6, 53-72
Rutherford, M (1999) ‘Man is mortal but obituaries will never die’ Financial Times, December 18.
Scott, J (2001) ‘It was a Dark and Stormy Life’ New York Times, July 8.
Starck, N (2004) Posthumous reflections: the newspaper obituary as the first verdict of history. Paper to the Association for Journalism Education
Starck, N (2006) Life After Death. Melbourne University Press
Walter, T (2006) Telling the Dead Man’s Tale, Bereavement Care
Walter, T (2005) Mediator Deathwork, Death Studies, 29(5), 383-412.

Bibliography
Bennett, V (2002) ‘Catch One’s Death’ The Times, January 1.
Brunskill, I (2003) ‘Who makes it into The Times’s obituaries’ The Times, June 13.
Bullamore, T (2006) A Dying Art. Paper to Julian House, Bath
Corona, I (unpublished) research into mass obituaries in Spain, Britain and the US
Ferguson, E (2002) ‘Death is the New Black’ Observer Review, April 28.
Fowler, B (2003) ‘Towards a socio-genesis of the arts in the contemporary obituary’ International Sociological Association, Paris, 2003
Fowler, B (2004) Mapping the obituary: notes towards a Bourdieusian interpretation. The Sociological Review, Oxford
Gross, K (2003) ‘Portraits of Grief: a focus on survivors’ New York Law School, Law Review, Vol 46
Howard, A (1999) ‘One thing never failed to surprise me - the number of people who sent in their own obituaries‘ New Statesman, February 12.
Massingberd, H (1995) The Daily Telegraph Book of Obituaries: a celebration of eccentric lives. MacMillan, London
Richmond, C (2003) Obituary of David Horrobin, BMJ 2003;326: 885; see also BMJ 2003;327:229
Sanders, K (2003) Ethics and Journalism, p.10; Sage, London
Shilling, J (2006) ‘So pleased to meet you (alas, too late)’ The Times, February 9.
Starck, N (2004) Writes of passage: a comparative study of newspaper obituary practice in Australia, Britain and the United States (PhD thesis); Flinders University
Starck, N (2005) ‘Tales of life, not death’ Eureka Street