06 Nov 2020
The NAFD’s role in the burial of the Unknown Warrior in 1920
By Dr Brian Parsons
Visitors to Westminster Abbey cannot fail to notice the black granite memorial covering the grave of the Unknown Warrior immediately inside the West door. Following a suggestion from an army chaplain, Reverend David Railton, to the Dean of Westminster, an unidentified body was brought from the battlefields of Flanders to be buried in the Abbey in November 1920. It was to be a ceremony without precedent which captured the heart of a nation scarred by war.
”The bringing of the Unknown Warrior from his grave in Flanders to the heart of London, where his coming was awaited by King and his Princes, Generals and Admirals, Archbishops and Bishops, Ministers of State, and a multitude of men and women, was the tribute of the nation’s soul, and of all great and humbler people made equal in reverence, to the virtue of the Common Man who won the war.” Sir Philip Gibbs (The Illustrated London News November 1920)
Literature on the subject, however, fails to refer to the contribution by funeral directors. As an occupation familiar with managing complex events within a short timeframe, the approach by the Ministry of Works to assist in this task did not overwhelm the representatives of the NAFD (then known as the British Undertakers’ Association). They regarded the request as an honour. Yet the work of the secretary of the London centre of the British Undertakers’ Association, John Sowerbutts, and the National President, Kirtley Nodes, should not go unrecorded.
Published to mark the centenary of the funeral of the Unknown Warrior, this article reveals the involvement of the funeral profession in a unique and unforgettable task. The first provides biographical sketches of the two personalities involved while the second reprints John Sowerbutt’s chronological account of the event which appeared in The Undertakers’ Journal in November 1920; it is interspersed with a commentary in addition to quotes from Kirtley Nodes’ experiences, published in 1944 and those of Brigadier General Wyatt along with information about the coffin.
Read the feature here.