The Undertaker Arrested In The Middle Of Conducting A Funeral For Stealing Feathers For His Horses
More than a century ago, a British mortician made headlines for buying stolen goods — something he apparently had experience with
Funerals are by nature solemn affairs, as loved ones and the world at large bid farewell to somebody leaving the earthly world behind. There has to be something big to disrupt such proceedings, and that’s exactly what happened more than a century ago when an English undertaker was arrested in the middle of conducting a funeral for theft of decorative majestic feather plumes and velvets used to adorn horses.
It was reported that in 1907 London, Joseph Barker, an undertaker from Shoreditch suffered the indignity of being arrested by police while he was finishing funereal rites. He was charged with knowingly accepted stolen goods consisting of “three pairs of feather plumes and three pairs of horse velvets.”
Futhermore, a local coffinmaker named John (Jack) Sigournay was also arrested for stealing 12 pairs of feather plumes and 14 pairs of velvets — all worth in excess of 100 pounds. These items were taken from another area undertaker named Henry Wade Simpson.
