Patricia Jalland

A culture of silent grief?: The transformation of bereavement care in 20th century England

Abstract Why was Cruse Bereavement Care created in 1959? This article explores that and other questions in the broader context of the twentieth century history of bereavement in England. Ignorance and silence about death and loss were widespread in the fifty years after 1914: cultural norms were transformed by two world wars, the decline of religion, and demographic change. In the inter-war years responses to bereavement varied widely, according to class, gender, region and religion. The two world wars had a profound and cumulative impact on the prolonged process of change in the attitudes and behaviour relating to death and bereavement. The Second World War created a greater break with the past as a pervasive culture of avoidance, minimal ritual and suppressed grieving became entrenched in the English psyche. From the 1970s cultural change encouraged the revival of expressive grieving and the increasing popularity of bereavement counselling. Psychiatrist Colin Murray Parkes introduced the lay person to bereavement in his influential 1972 pioneering work. Increasing emphasis today is placed on diversity in grieving, reflecting our changing cultural boundaries.

Bereavement in the English family 1850–1980: Exploring change over time

The family’s role was central to bereavement in nineteenth century England and has continued to be influential in certain regions and classes up to the 1940s. But cultural norms in bereavement shifted powerfully in the twentieth century because of demographic and medical change and the two world wars, especially the Second World War. A pervasive model of suppressed and privatized grieving became entrenched in the English psyche for the next 30 years and inevitably reduced the involvement of the family.

Death and bereavement in the First World War: the Australian experience

The First World War was a turning point in the cultural history of death and bereavement in Australia. The mass deaths of some 60,000 soldiers overseas led to communal rituals of mourning for the war dead and minimal public expressions of private grief. The mass slaughter of so many young men and the interminable grief of so many families devalued the deaths of civilians at home and helped to create a new cultural model of suppressed and privatised grieving which deeply constrained the next two generations. Emotional and expressive grieving became less common, mourning ritual was minimised and sorrow became a private matter.

A Liberal Chief Secretary and the Irish Question: Augustine Birrell, 1907–1914 *

Augustine Birrell performed the thankless task of chief secretary for Ireland for a longer period than any of his forty-nine predecessors. His nine years of office from 1907 to 1916 included some of the most critical years of Anglo-Irish history, and ended tragically when he accepted blame for the 1916 Easter rebellion, which has haunted his political reputation ever since. Birrell has been generally condemned by the English and consigned to oblivion by the Irish. This article will reassess Birrells work as Irish secretary by relating his actual achievements and failures to the complex problems which constituted the Liberal dilemma in Ireland. Emphasis is placed on the earlier and more successful period of Birrells administration, which has been almost entirely neglected by English historians.