Britain's biggest burial

2007-08-10 20:15

London - A man who died of heart failure weighing 317kg has been buried in what undertakers said was the biggest coffin ever made in Britain.

Mark Bamber, 38, was buried in a solid mahogany casket measuring 2.3m long and four foot six inches wide with a depth of 30 inches, the Manchester Evening News in north-west England said.

The coffin is said to have weighed half a ton. He could not be cremated as the crematorium oven in his hometown of Wigan was too small. The casket was also too big for a hearse so it had to be pulled by a horse-drawn platform.

Alan Roby, of funeral directors Thorley Smith, was quoted as saying: "It really was at the very edge of what is dignified.

Heaviest man?

"It has got to be the biggest casket ever used in this country. And it is a casket rather than a coffin because it would have been impossible to make the coffin shape at that size. A casket is a straight rectangular box...

"In total the laden casket was about 10-11 hundredweight, or over half a ton. It was made to hold up to 70 stone in weight. He might even have been the heaviest man to ever have been buried in this country.

"The funeral really stretched the capabilities of all the people involved."

Bamber, who had battled against weight gain all his life, had to be removed by firefighters via his bedroom window when he fell ill and needed to be taken to hospital. He died on July 28.

Like many Western countries, Britain is getting fatter, with what medical practitioners call an "obesity timebomb" having implications not just on people's health but the health care system and society at large.

Bamber's brother Ray was quoted as saying he wanted people to realise that obesity was becoming the norm.

"Just look up and down Wigan town centre, everybody is getting larger. And if we can't fix that, then we've got to start catering for it, like they do in America," he said.

- AFP