Saturday, June 25, 2011

Used Coffins for Sale! (Unidentified Glass-Plate Image)

Sitting on Caskets
(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.


Image from the glass-plate negative collection at the museum. This young fellow and the location are both unidentified — to my great grief, because I would really like to know what is going on here. Why is he sitting on coffins? More importantly, why do those coffins appear the worse for wear? The furthest one in back, for example, seems to have lost its lid to corrosion.

I hope these weren't dug up out of the ground. Maybe they were just left out in the weather too long. That could be, right? Nobody died for a long, long time — for years — and the coffins just sat out there, unused and weathering. Yeah, that's the ticket.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Could they be fancy bathtubs? HAHA

Ainsworthiana said...

:D That's as good a theory as my nobody-died one.

Janice said...

Don't they look small for adult coffins? Maybe it's just the perspective of the shot. . .

Ainsworthiana said...

That's the thing I hate about those old-fashioned coffins -- they always look so small, and you think about being crammed in there ... not a nice thing to think about.

Suzi said...

Saw an episode of Storage Wars in which there was an old, fancy, tin coffin found. It was empty, much to the buyer's relief. When researched, they found that bodies were viewed in an ornate coffin, then actually buried in something less fancy, which I would assume would be plain wood. These don't appear to be viewing coffins, tho
. Interesting picture!

Ainsworthiana said...

They re-used the viewing coffins?! Yikes!

Anonymous said...

I can't get past his short little tie!

Ainsworthiana said...

Yeah, looks like he couldn't find his own so he borrowed his kid brother's. And he borrowed Smokey the Bear's hat, too.