Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1895 — Keeping Up With the Times! [ARTICLE]

Keeping Up With the Times!

“Electric funerals” are the very latest thing in Harrisburg,Penn. The trolley wire leads to the cemetery and the enterprising company which has the street railway franchise has constructed a special funeral car and rents it to mourners who desire to bury the departed according to the ultra modorn ideas of this electric age. This comes as near to “galvanizing the corpse” as modern science can, and it is a step in advance of St. Louis’ electric hospital car. In that city an ambulance car makes its regular trips, picks up candidates for the surgical ward in the city hospital and conveys them with neatness and dispatch to the operating table. It remains for Chicago to adopt St. Louis’ electric hospital car, fit up an [electric car for the coroner, borrow Harrisburg’s electric funeral car, hook them all together and be at the head of the procession. When the victim is dug from under the electric car he can be taken into the hospital car. If he dies the coroner can ring up six passengers to serve as jury, hold his inquest and pass the legalized corpse back Into the funeral car without causing the company to lose a single nickel through a moment's delay.