Pat Jalland, Australian Ways of Death: a Social and Cultural History 1840-1918.

Murray, Lisa

Pat Jalland, Australian Ways of Death: A Social and Cultural History 1840-1918, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2002.

Pat Jalland's Australian Ways of Death falls into a genre of death historiography that focuses upon the national cultural expression of deathways. Other examples of this genre include Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death (1963), Julian Litten's The English Way of Death (1991), and Brian Parsons' The London Way of Death (2001).

Jalland's research is a welcome addition to the small (but growing) area of death studies in Australia. In Australia, the main predecessors are Graeme N. Griffin and Des Tobin's In the Midst of Life: The Australian Response to Death (1982, 2nd ed. 1997), and Allan Kellehear (ed.) Death and Dying in Australia (2000). Australian Ways of Death is the first substantial national history produced by a historian. Jalland meticulously draws upon a wide range of primary sources including diaries, letters, religious consolation literature, funeral sermons, In Memoriam notices, undertakers' records, friendly society records, coronial records, newspapers, and parliamentary papers. She balances the evidence between the various colonies remarkably well. Often national histories carry a predominance of evidence from the eastern states, but this bias is overcome with Jalland using a significant amount of evidence from South Australia and Western Australia.

The history is divided by Jalland into four themes: transmission and influence of European culture and ideals; death at sea; death and the destitute; and death in the bush. Unlike other national histories, Jalland emphasises the diversity in the Australian ways of death, as reflected in the book's title.

The vast majority of the history analyses the cultural transmission of death practices to Australia; this forms part II of the book. Much of this research has parallels with Jalland's previous research on Death in the Victorian Family (1996) in Britain and those familiar with this work will recognise many of the themes that she discusses--such as the evangelical ideal of the `good death', children's deaths, gendered experiences of widowhood, and the consolations of memory and mourning.

Part III--death and the destitute--looks at the urban poor. This is an area that has been previously ignored by historians, and Jalland makes an important contribution to our understanding of old age and institutionalised death in the nineteenth century.

The two themes which Jalland argues exhibit an distinctive Australian culture of death are death at sea, and death in the bush.

Jalland asserts that death at sea is a distinctively Australian cultural experience, however this is not argued convincingly. The fear of a `watery grave' doesn't appear to be distinctively Australian, but rather expresses British and European ideals about the good Christian death, control over the corpse, social identity in death and the wish to be memorialised. Questions arise in my mind about migration to other countries, particularly America, but no comparisons are made.

Jalland is more compelling in her arguments about death and dying in the bush. Like death and the destitute, dying in the bush has been a neglected topic by Australian historians. Jalland identifies the colonial bush death as a particular literary and artistic genre with no equivalent in British culture. She contrasts the absence of ritual associated with death with the ideal Christian death celebrated in urban centres. Jalland demonstrates how the heroic bush death belies the reality of violent and accidental deaths by males on the frontier and marginalises the deaths of Aboriginal people and white women and children.

While the death of the heroic bushman is clearly a distinctive image in the Australian culture of death, I don't believe Jalland adequately explains why it became so important in the nineteenth century. She continually looks at the frontier in her quest to understand the bush burial, overlooking other rural experiences, such as the conditions of death under pastoralism. Consequently, Jalland focuses upon `lonely' graves, and does not fully address the trend for informal burial grounds or private cemeteries on homestead pastoral properties. Again questions of comparison arise with other `frontier' societies such as America, or perhaps Canada or New Zealand. These are only briefly addressed (pp. 263-264), but suggest more cross-cultural comparisons of `settler' societies would be useful in understanding Australian ways of death.

Like all good histories, Jalland's work highlights potential new areas of research, including: an analysis of the material culture of death; a more detailed look at funeral practices and the development of the funerary industry; a history of cemeteries and commemoration (although the reviewer's PhD (2001) on this subject is a beginning); and further cross-cultural comparisons of deathways (see Charmaz et al 1997). However there were some serious omissions in the book, too.

Australian Ways of Death claims to be a social and cultural history of death, grief and mourning from 1840 to 1918, but the majority of the history is about Protestant upper and middle class responses to death. This is perhaps unsurprising given Jalland's previous research on the British middle class responses to death and dying. But in the context of a national history of death, grief and mourning such a bias is unacceptable. Jalland does try to balance the Protestant view with examples of Roman Catholic rituals, and certainly the two chapters on death and the destitute address the class balance somewhat. But the absence of the labouring classes from Jalland' s history is striking, and made all the more peculiar given Jalland's assertion that `attitudes to death and burial in the Australian bush arguably owed more to ... the popular customs and beliefs of the poor labouring classes in Ireland and Britain than to the middle-and upper-class "Victorian way of death".' (p. 262.)

More disappointingly, Jalland fails to place death and dying in Australia within a multicultural context. One example of a German Lutheran response to death is cited. But there is no discussion of Jewish deathways. Nor of Chinese or Afghan practices, which is surprising given the focus upon the goldfields and the frontier in chapters 13 to 15. And Aboriginal deaths are only discussed briefly in the context of frontier deaths (pp. 265-268).

Some criticism should be levelled at the publisher for the presentation of the book. The illustrations are disappointing. The history of death, grief and mourning is rich in material culture. Despite the fact that Jalland discusses mourning costume, jewellery and keepsakes, there is not one picture of these items in the book. The lack of images probably reflects the constraints of the publisher rather than the choice of the author. However, an analysis of funerary ephemera and material culture in Australia, along the lines of Morley (1971), Litten (1991) or even more simplistically Parsons (2001), is long overdue and this was a lost opportunity.

At times the referencing of evidence is frustratingly sparse. For example, Jalland outlines the conventions of mourning dress, but no reference is given to support her summary (pp. 130-131), even though etiquette books, diaries and letters would no doubt have informed these generalisations. Likewise, Jalland claims mourning dress conventions `were scarcely observed in rural areas' (p. 131) but no evidence is cited. These omissions probably reflect the pressures of tailoring a scholarly piece of work to reach a popular audience. Nevertheless, historians should expect better from an academic press such as Oxford University Press.

And what about the cover design? Admittedly, I have only seen the paperback version, however the cover design is dull, dull, dull. If ever a book cover perpetuates the myth that history is dusty and boring this ugly brown and yellow cover does it. Now you might say that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. But when there has been a renaissance in the cover design of literary novels over the last five years, you have to ask why we are putting up with such dull covers for history books?

But the disappointing cover did not stop me from thoroughly enjoying this history. Jalland has a straightforward writing style, which combines with her generous use of quotes and case studies, to produce a history that is accessible, easy to read and entertaining. Australian Ways of Death is a valuable work that supersedes In the midst of Life as the premier history on death, grief and mourning in Australia.

References

Charmaz, K., Howarth, G. & Kellehear, A. (eds) 1997, The Unknown Country: Death in Australia, Britain and the USA, Macmillan, Basingstoke.

Griffin, G. & Tobin, D. 1997, 2nd edn 1982, In the Midst of Life: The Australian Response to Death, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.

Jalland, P. 1996, Death in the Victorian Family, Oxford University Press Melbourne.

Kellehear, A. 2000, Death & Dying in Australia, Oxford University Press Melbourne.