Great Britain: Anyone can be an undertaker and store corpses

Anyone can work as a undertaker in the UK and store bodies in their garage. “Nobody could stop them,” warned Jonathan Michael, head of an investigative commission, in an interim report. “That can’t be right.” Michael demanded: “We need regulation that does not tolerate any form of abuse or practices that endanger the safety and dignity of those who have died.”

The investigative commission is supposed to clarify how a double murderer and sex offender with necrophiliac tendencies was able to commit suicide on dozens of corpses in clinics for years. The man was sentenced to life in prison at the end of 2021 and is unlikely to leave prison alive.

In the first phase, the investigation revealed serious deficiencies in the two hospitals. Now it’s about the situation in the funeral industry.

Abusing the dead? Not uncommon in Great Britain

Many people assume the funeral industry is regulated – and are shocked to find out it isn’t, Michael said. “The fact is that anyone can be an undertaker. He could do it from home and keep the bodies of the dead in his garage without anyone stopping him.”

Cases of misuse or improper storage of corpses have repeatedly caused horror, as Sky News reported. In May 2022, a Blackpool undertaker was sentenced to 17 years in prison after posing for photos next to naked corpses and asking a man to have sex with a corpse in his morgue. In November 2021, a Manchester area undertaker received a prison sentence for allowing the dead to rot and defrauding their relatives.

The investigative commission also found evidence in other cases that personal items were not disposed of according to the wishes of the dead. Trash was left in a coffin. A corpse was spit on because the deceased had supported another football team during his lifetime.