"After the First World War, the ritual of the Victorian funeral with horse-drawn hearse was only observed by the urban working class and royalty, and by the 1960s it had more or less died out.
Likewise for
state funerals – Winston Churchill’s casket travelled in a motor hearse when it
wasn’t on a gun carriage, or, at one point, a police launch on the river
Thames.
Nowadays it’s
more or less only for urban working class royalty, or more precisely Cockney
working class royalty: Pearly Kings and Queens.
Another branch
of urban working class aristocracy that stuck with the old-fashioned funeral
was also London-based. An aristocracy that ruled their manors with a fist of
iron (or in Ronnie Kray’s case, a hoof of iron) – the crime families of Old
London Town.
“No-one
locked the front door” (in the limos in the cortege)
It looks like
the tradition died with Reggie Kray in 2000, because Charlie Richardson went
off in a motor hearse in 2012, even if it was a vintage Rolls Royce.
One of the
limos in Charlie’s cortège had a floral tribute that spelled out “240DC” in
white chrysanthemums.
This
commemorated a WWII army generator of the type used to set off explosive
charges which featured prominently in the evidence at the trial of Charles and
his brother in 1966. It was apparently used to punish the taking of liberties,
being attached to the victim’s genitals or nipples while a charge was cranked
up.
The brothers
always denied using torture, but it’s hard to see what the joke would have been
in having a voltage-based floral tribute if that were the case. Where would the
humour be in celebrating a perjury that was used to fit you up for 18 years
inside?
Bruce Reynolds,
mastermind of the Great Train Robbery, went off in a modern hearse and a wicker
coffin, and without the benefit of any mailbag or locomotive floral tributes.
His funeral’s
remembered more for Ronnie Biggs’ response to the press corps photographers at
what turned out to be his last public appearance – an old fashioned
two-fingered ‘V’ sign delivered with the back of the hand outwards.
(Note to
younger readers and those from outside the UK and the Commonwealth: with the
hand this way round, rather than ‘V for Victory’, this signifies ‘Fuck Off’.
Interestingly, there are many photographs of Winston Churchill flashing this
variation, always with a cheeky grin.)
Ronnie Biggs
himself, most notorious of the train robbers, went for the same modern
hearse/wicker coffin combo as Bruce Reynolds, and in an even bigger departure
from tradition, people were asked not to wear black, although most of them did
anyway.
The coffin was
draped with the Union Jack and a Brazilian flag, with an old-fashioned barber’s
pole Arsenal scarf and his hat laid on top, like a field marshal’s uniform cap
and medals. He also had a New Orleans jazz band leading the hearse, and a
Hell’s Angels motorcycle escort.
Rather than a
cosh or a mailbag, the single floral tribute celebrated Ronnie’s appearance at
Bruce Reynolds’ funeral, flashing a giant V sign as Ronnie’s last message to
the world from the back window of the hearse.
Since “Mad”
Frankie Fraser, in-gang electrical and dental practitioner for the Richardsons,
chose the same modern Rolls-Royce hearse from the same firm as Charlie
Richardson, and eschewed voltage or pliers-based floral tributes for a
family-centric DAD/GRANDAD/FRANK hearsetop set, the last hope for an
old-fashioned crime family horse-drawn funeral lies with Eddie Richardson, but
the signs aren’t good – a depressingly modern Richardson trend
has been set by Charlie and Frankie."
photo telegraph.co
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