A Scottish Storyteller

Talking to people at work about coffins (like you do), I remembered a story that was possibly a story dad had told me, or an episode of Steptoe and Son.

Of course, it turned out to be a dad-story…

In the 70’s there was a big scandal locally where the coffin makers and the cremators at the local crematorium had a bit of a scam going... When a particularly expensive coffin had been commissioned, the body was burnt and the coffin resold.

Now apparently this was a bit of a scandal, with lots of people being prosecuted. The fact that Aberdonians were already viewed as thrifty didn’t help. A couple of months after the scandal, dad visited a friend of his where he was led up to the attic where (lo and behold!) a pile of good walnut coffins were stored, away from the magistrates.

Eager to get rid of the dodgy wood, his mate sold or gave him this wood, which ended up as a few coffee tables in upper class living rooms throughout Aberdeen. Dad made a high quality tool box from the scraps and when he went to Glasgow to work, he was known as “coffin lids.”





What many Aberdonians have as coffee tables

Labels: dad's stories