Most of us study that Song dynasty when we were kids . Its origins seem to be lost to history and ( if Google can be desire ) , there are dozens of versions of the lyrics , but they all seem to begin with a line about a hearse . In westerly polish , hearse are among the most readily identifiable symbol of demise . A hearse is the railroad car you ’re kick the bucket to take your last drive in , and deplorably , for a lot us , it may be one of the very few ride we ’ll ever take in alimo - like vehicle . Is it any wonder that hearse have become an object of fascination ? People collect them , ride around town in them , take them to classic car appearance and enjoy telling scary stories about them , too . There are even ghost stories about hearse and a few regional caption in which they ’re conspicuously have .
Yet most of us know very little about them . How are hearses made ? ( Here ’s a jot : It involves sawing a absolutely proficient motorcar in two . ) How long have hearse been around ? ( Modern motorized hearses came into existence about a century ago . ) What kind of cars are they typically made from ? ( Cadillac andLincolnare among the most democratic hearse donor vehicles . ) How much do they be ? ( Let ’s just say , if you have to ask , you in all probability ca n’t afford one . )
In the rest of this article , which really should be called , " Everything You Ever Wanted to make love about Hearses but Were Afraid to Ask , " we ’ll expect at hearses in greater detail . We ’ll learn their chronicle , walk through the manufacturing process and tell apart a spooky story or two along the way .
So what are you waiting for ? Turn the Thomas Nelson Page and find out more . You ’re not scared , are you ?
A Brief History of Hearses
In the funeral industry , a hearse is n’t usually called a hearse . It ’s advert to as afuneral autobus . Funeral directors find that terminal figure a bit more self-respecting and a fiddling less horrendous than the more familiar intelligence . In this article , however , we ’ll proceed to refer to these vehicles as hearses , because that ’s how most of us know them . The password " hearse " comes from the Middle English " herse , " which name to a type of candelabra often lay on top of a coffin . Sometime in the 17th C , hoi polloi starting using the word to concern to the horse - drawn carriages that get the casket to the lieu of burial during a funeral emanation .
Hearses remain horse - drawn until the first decade of the twentieth century , when motorise hearse began to appear . Nobody ’s quite sure what year these motorized hearse were first put into use , but it was most likely between 1901 and 1907 . Here ’s another interesting piece of info : The first hearse motor were electric . The first hearse built with an interior combustionenginedidn’t come along until 1909 , at the funeral of Wilfrid A. Pruyn . The undertaker creditworthy was H.D. Ludlow , who commissioned a vehicle to be build out of the body of a gymnastic horse - drawn hearse and the chassis of a bus . This new type of hearse was quite pop with the funeral home ’s wealthier customer and Ludlow used it for 13 more funerals before supplant it with a big model .
Ludlow ’s innovation may have been democratic with the public , but most funeral film director found mechanise hearses too expensive – about $ 6,000 per hearse . A corresponding horse - drawn hearse of that period would have cost about $ 1,500 . But , as prices dropped and intragroup burning locomotive engine became more hefty , those same funeral director recognise that speedier hearses would mean more funerals per day . So , despite the superfluous cost , gas pedal - power hearse became the norm by the 1920s .
In the same class that Wilfrid A. Pruyn was buried , the Crane and Breed Company of Cincinnati , Ohio , became the first manufacturer of hearses . Their vehicle whizz along at a brisk 30 mph ( 48 kilometers per hour ) , fairly fast in those sidereal day for a cable car of any variety . The four - cylinder engine generate just 30horsepowerand used a three - speedtransmission . Other companies soon get down to offer hearse of their own . These first gasoline - driven hearse imitate the boxy pattern of the horse - drawn variety , but in the 1930s the longer , landau - stylehearse was inaugurate by Sayers and Scovill , and its sleek , limo - like form remains pop today .
It was not rare in the other and middle voice of the 20th century for hearse to do as both funeral coach and ambulance , depending on the immediate need that the community had for them . Such vehicles , once common in modest towns , were known ascombination coaches . ordinance for ambulances became hard-and-fast after the 1970s , however , and now it ’s rare for one fomite to serve in both part .
So how are hearses made ? We ’ll depend at that topic on the next Thomas Nelson Page .
How Hearses Are Built
No major American motorcar maker builds hearse at the factory . General Motors has no hearse sectionalization . Neither does Ford or Chrysler ( or , for that matter , Honda , Mazda , or Toyota ) . or else , most hearses are hand - crafted by companies that take the bodies of existing cars and customize them , crap them longer and adding special purpose parts . Let ’s look at how this unconscious process works .
Although the ambulance diligence moved several decades ago to using trucks as their base vehicle , hearse Godhead prefer to useluxury carsfrom company like Cadillac , Lincoln and Buick . To turn a luxury car into a hearse , the electrical system and all vital unstable melody are removed and a round saw is used to cut the car into two halves , a front one-half and a rear half . These two halves are then accommodate onto a longer chassis , often supplied by the original maker , and overlaid with a wrought fibreglass shield that connects the front one-half with the back half . The shell is paint to match the relief of the vehicle , the electric system of rules and fluid line are reattached and now the car resembles what we think of as a hearse . But the custom - build is n’t quite that simple .
A telephone number of internal and external characteristic are tally in the process , too . A prospicient platform is placed inside to hold the casket . This platform has tumbler on top of it so that the casket can skid in and out through the rearward doors . Bier personal identification number platesallow the casket to be secured in place so that it wo n’t by chance wrap while the hearse is in move . Drapes are also placed on the window that start the length of the double-decker . These occur in two different styles : formal drapes , made from a velvet - like textile and hung in arches , like the curtain on the side of a proscenium - stylus leg ; and air hose drapery , which hang up straight down for a more innovative facial expression . The latter style is the Modern of the two stylus , having first appear in the 1950s .
The largest manufacturer of hearses in the United States today is Accubuilt , Inc. , of Lima , Ohio . Over the years a number of major hearse maker have conflate and are now part of Accubuilt . These include Superior Coach , Eureka , Miller - Meteor , and Sayers and Scovill , figure that will be instantly recognizable to anyone interested in funeral coaches . Accubuilt presently build up 60 percent of the hearses used at American funerals . In fact , Accubuilt issue the hearse for the 2004 funeral of former President Ronald Reagan as well as the limousines for his funeral progression . Other hearse Almighty include Wolfington Body Company and Binz Hearses . The latter builds hearse on the Mercedes - Benz chassis .
So , how much do handcrafted hearses cost ? Well , if you must eff , they ’re in the neighbourhood of about $ 60,000 . Like we said earlier , if you have to ask , you probably ca n’t open one , at least not a fresh one , anyway . On the next page , however , we ’ll look at the great unwashed who are quite happy to buy their hearse used .
Hearse Collectors
Hearses and otherprofessional cars(a family that include ambulances , limo , and funeral flower railcar ) think a time when most cars were large , luxuriant and occasionally even handcrafted . These cars have a kind of mystique to them – an atmosphere of glamour and secret – and as we all know , any railway car that ’s glamourous or mysterious will draw collectors . And yet , until the seventies , hearse collector were moderately difficult to see . perchance it ’s because the approximation of a privately owned hearse seemed just a piffling too morbid or a small too odd ? But that did n’t stop everyone .
About 35 years ago , the Professional Car Society was form to bring attention to these vehicles and cue masses how attractively crafted they are . Gregg D. Merksamer , author of Professional Cars : Ambulances , Hearses and Flower Cars , propose that the society was able to overcome the brand surrounding hearse by forbidding any display of casket , skull or other skittish artifacts at car shows and cabaret functions , accentuate or else what wonderful pieces of automotive memorabilia these vehicles truly are .
Whatever the case , the collecting of hearse has caught on among machine enthusiasts . In addition to the Professional Car Society , organizations like the National Hearse and Ambulance Association and the Last Ride Hearse Society have sprung up , as well as local groups like the Denver Hearse Association and the Tomb . intelligibly not all hearse club are afraid of associating the vehicles with spooky images . Celebrity hearse fancier include rock Isaac M. Singer Neil Young , who at one time used a 1948 Buick hearse to enchant his equipment to concert . likewise , Domingo " Sam " Samudio of the 1960s rock grouping , Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs ( easily lie with for the song " Woolly Bully " ) , used a 1952 Packard hearse as an all - intention equipment vehicle .
Up next , we ’ll take a look at some of the unusual stories and caption that have raise - up around hearse .
Hearse Legends
It ’s barely surprising that hearses figure prominently in chilling stories and local myths . What ’s surprising is that one of these myth – an urban caption , really – concerns a well - lie with magnet at Disneyland , in Anaheim , California . Or maybe it ’s not so surprising after all , give that the attraction in interrogation is the Haunted Mansion .
Disney ’s Haunted Mansion is a drive that takes the visitant through , as the name implies , ahaunted house . There are stacks of fun details for the visitor to expect at , including one outside of the drawing card : an old - fashioned horse - drawn hearse that sit ominously in the mansion ’s
front yard . Somehow a fable
rise that the hearse chosen by the Disney Imagineers was the same hearse used at the 1877 funeral of Brigham Young , a prominent figure in Mormonism and former chairman of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter - day Saints . Young is an important figure to Mormons and it would be very left over , to say the least , if his hearse ended up at Disneyland .
And , in fact , it is n’t Brigham Young ’s hearse at all – although this urban caption is a persistent one . Snopes.com , the popular urban fable - repudiation site , point out that this hearse ca n’t maybe have been used at Young ’s funeral , mainly because there was n’t a hearse at Young ’s funeral ! His casket was handwriting - run by pall bearers to its concluding resting place . Nobody , however , seems to have a go at it where the hearse at Disneyland come up from , although it does seem to be a true 19th one C hearse .
Some other hearse legend :
People who live in the northerly section of Summit County , Ohio , claim that if you get too close to a house on a local dead - end street , an old human beings in a hearse ( presumably a ghost ) will chase you down a dirt route . historian say that there really was a family in the area at one meter that possess a hearse , but it ’s unlikely that anybody chase after anybody down this particular route because the domain is too fill with Tree for a car to get through .
At the Archer Woods Cemetery near Chicago , Ill. , a squad of spiritual horse towing a phantom hearse occasionally appears in the night , badly terrible ( if not actually harming ) those who lay claim to have seen it . The story of the gymnastic horse and the ghostly hearse is part of a cycle of ghost stories concerning the graveyard in this area and the restless booze bury there .
Sleepy Hollow Road in Louisville , Ky. , is the fit of several New ghost stories , one of which concerns a mysterious pitch-dark hearse that follows cars in the area , causing them to run off the route and fall off a cliff .
It seems that as long as hearse are a part of funerals there will be eerie history told about them , as well as people who are fascinate by them . It ’s difficult to not have strong emotional feelings bear on anything that has to do with death . Including hearse . So commemorate :
For more information about hearse and other related topics , follow the links on the next page .
