WA coroner is a government official who is empowered to conduct or order an inquest into the manner or cause of death, and to investigate or confirm the identity of an unknown person who has been found dead within the coroner's jurisdiction.
WA diener is a morgue worker responsible for handling, moving, and cleaning the corpse. Dieners are also referred to as morgue attendants, autopsy technicians, and other titles that can vary from region to region. The word is derived from the German word Leichendiener, which literally means corpse servant.
WCaitlin Marie Doughty is an American mortician, author, blogger, and YouTube personality known for advocating death acceptance and the reform of Western funeral industry practices. She is the owner of Clarity Funerals and Cremation of Los Angeles, creator of the Web series "Ask a Mortician", founder of The Order of the Good Death, and author of three bestselling books, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory (2014), From Here to Eternity; Traveling the World to Find the Good Death (2017), and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death (2019).
WA funeral director, also known as an undertaker or mortician, is a professional involved in the business of funeral rites. These tasks often entail the embalming and burial or cremation of the dead, as well as the arrangements for the funeral ceremony. Funeral directors may at times be asked to perform tasks such as dressing, casketing, and cossetting. A funeral director may work at a funeral home or be an independent employee.
WA gravedigger is a cemetery worker who is responsible for digging a grave prior to a funeral service.
WMohammad Samir Hossain is a Bangladeshi theorist living in New Zealand who is one of the few Muslim scientists in the field of Death anxiety (psychology) research. He is the pioneering physician to introduce scientific thanatology and spiritual psychiatry in Bangladesh. He is also an author of multiple theory books on death adjustment.
WDerek Humphry is a British-born American journalist and author notable as a proponent of legal assisted suicide and the right to die philosophy. In 1980, he co-founded the Hemlock Society and, in 2004, after that organization dissolved, he co-founded the Final Exit Network. From 1988 to 1990, he was president of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies and is the current president of the Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization (ERGO).
WJack Kevorkian was an American pathologist and euthanasia proponent. He publicly championed a terminal patient's right to die by physician-assisted suicide, embodied in his quote "Dying is not a crime". Kevorkian said that he assisted at least 130 patients, to that end. He was convicted of murder in 1999 and was often portrayed in the media with the name of "Dr. Death". There was support for his cause, and he helped set the platform for reform.
WElisabeth Kübler-Ross was a Swiss-American psychiatrist, a pioneer in near-death studies, and author of the internationally best-selling book, On Death and Dying (1969), where she first discussed her theory of the five stages of grief, also known as the "Kübler-Ross model".
WJohn Claudius Loudon was a Scottish botanist, garden designer and author. He was the first to use the term arboretum in writing to refer to a garden of plants, especially trees, collected for the purpose of scientific study. The standard author abbreviation Loudon is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name. He had a wife, Jane, née Webb.
WA medical examiner is an official trained in pathology that investigates deaths that occur under unusual or suspicious circumstances, to perform post-mortem examinations, and in some jurisdictions to initiate inquests.
WJessica Lucy "Decca" Freeman-Mitford was an English author, one of the six aristocratic Mitford sisters noted for their sharply conflicting politics.
WA mourner is someone who is attending a funeral or who is otherwise recognized as in a period of grief and mourning prescribed either by religious law or by popular custom. Many cultures expect mourners to curtail certain activities, usually those considered frivolous or that are accompanied by expressions of joy.
WThomas Tsunetomi Noguchi is the former Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner for the County of Los Angeles from 1967 to 1982. Known as the "coroner to the stars", he determined the cause of death in many high-profile cases in Hollywood during the 1960s and 1970s. He performed autopsies on Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Sharon Tate, Gia Scala, William Holden, Natalie Wood, and John Belushi.
WCharles Norris was New York's first appointed chief medical examiner (1918–1935) and pioneer of forensic toxicology in America.
WA pallbearer is one of several participants who help carry the casket at a funeral. They may wear white gloves in order to prevent damaging the casket and to show respect to the deceased person.
WResurrectionists were body snatchers who were commonly employed by anatomists in the United Kingdom during the 18th and 19th centuries to exhume the bodies of the recently dead. Between 1506 and 1752 only a very few cadavers were available each year for anatomical research. The supply was increased when, in an attempt to intensify the deterrent effect of the death penalty, Parliament passed the Murder Act 1752. By allowing judges to substitute the public display of executed criminals with dissection, the new law significantly increased the number of bodies anatomists could legally access. This proved insufficient to meet the needs of the hospitals and teaching centres that opened during the 18th century. Corpses and their component parts became a commodity, but although the practice of disinterment was hated by the general public, bodies were not legally anyone's property. The resurrectionists therefore operated in a legal grey area.
WMegan Curran Rosenbloom, born in 1981, is an American medical librarian and expert on anthropodermic bibliopegy – the practice of binding books in human skin. She is a team member of The Anthropodermic Book Project, a group which scientifically tests skin-bound books to determine if their origins are human.
WKatrina Mogielnicki Spade is an American designer, entrepreneur, and death care advocate. Spade is the founder of Recompose, a public-benefit corporation developing a natural alternative to conventional cremation and burial. She was awarded the Echoing Green Climate Fellowship in 2014 and the Ashoka Fellowship in 2018 for her work.