A FUNERAL director has revealed some surprising secrets from inside the morgue.

Victor Sweeney said a lot more goes into preparing a body for its end-of-life celebration than you might initially think.

For example, every deceased person that goes through a morgue will be bathed and have their hair washed – though not in the traditional way.

Replying to a curious Twitter user, Victor instead: "I cannot imagine trying to prop somebody up. Doing it whilst they’re laying down is definitely ideal."

The licensed mortician also cleared up whether people really have their mouths sewn up before their cremation or burial.

Victor said: "The answer to that is yes. And also no.

"We generally don’t sew the lips closed, you can imagine how much time and fine detail it would take to do that.

"Instead there are two ways to close a mouth. One involves bringing the jawbone up with a needle and some thread.

"You would go up out of the nose, across the septum, back down and through the lip to pull the two ends together, and it tightens the jaw right up.

"The other method is with what we call a needle injector. It's like a piston, it clicks.

"You simply twist [the wires] together so the wire holds it in place.

"Once the jaw itself is closed, the lips and the rest of the mouth take their form very naturally."

From there, morticians can put almost any facial expression on the dead.

Victor said: "Typically, a person's facial expression will almost make itself when we close the jaw and set the features.

"There are some things we can do to help create a more pleasant expression, like filling in some of the cheek with cotton or fluid."

And generally speaking, people who are smilers tend to smile in the casket, while frowners will have a more solemn look.

Among the darker questions put to Victor was one from someone who asked him if it is legal to turn a human into a "life-saved doll" following their death.

His answer was a straight and simple: "Absolutely not."

BODY RESTORATION

Another wanted to know how a mortician might "fix" a body that had been shot between the eyes, and if they might use some kind of "silly putty".

And they weren't far off. Victor explained that wax would likely be used to cover it.

"One of the things that we work very hard on is restoration," he said.

"When someone's shot between the eyes, providing the rest of the head is there and we just have a bullet hole, we’d probably want to pack it with cotton or a firmer material and cover it with wax, or surface restorer.

"It’s softer than candle wax. And when it's introduced to the heat of the hand it tends to soften up and we can use it to wax over a wound.

"Then we can get the proper texture with stippling and brush work, and colour over it and blend it in."

When it comes to the pose of the body, people's arms are traditionally placed over the naval, almost always left over right.

"The reason being is that more often than not, you will have been married so we want the hand with the wedding ring to be on top so people can see it," Victor explained.

'EMOTIONALLY TAXING JOB'

He also described the legality of sky burials, where a body is placed out in the open for vultures and other animals to pick apart.

In short, he said: "It is not legal."

For victims of Covid-19, morticians have had to introduce special procedures to stop them catching the virus.

Because despite them being deceased and not able to actively breathe or cough it out, they can still omit droplets when the body is moved.

"Whenever you manipulate a body, let's say from the place of death, there is going to be some expulsion out of the lungs.

"Right as coronavirus first started, we would shroud every body with plastic to contain any expulsions from their mouth.

"You wouldn't normally think that would be a problem with a dead body, but as it turns out, we would always see a kind of foggy condensation on that plastic right around the face."

Finally, someone asked whether Victor ever deals with the bodies of people he knows during his "emotionally taxing" work.

He said he does that "pretty frequently" and actually described it as "pretty nice".

This is because "you know how they do their hair, their make-up and how they like to get dressed".

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