For many decades, the Co-op was a way of life and it looked after you in life and in death. BEVERLEY SAUNDERS looks at the Co-op Funeral Society … The Rochdale Pioneers, a group of 28 men from Rochdale, are accredited with starting the first retail Co-operative Society, in 1844.

They opened a shop where superior quality goods were sold at reasonable prices. Customers received a dividend according to the amount they spent.

Owned and democratically controlled, members shared profits and there were, in addition, educational facilities, a bank and social facilities such as clubs and societies. One of the first areas to have a Co-op was Well Hall, in Eltham, but the shops eventually spread to all suburbs of south east London, eventually merging with other neighbouring societies to be taken over by a large consortium.

A funeral furnishing service operated from the beginning, run by the Lincoln Co-operative Society. This is the earliest record of a funeral service being run by a retail society.

However, the funeral side of the Co-op’s business has developed into a national, comprehensive service since the 1930s. By 1960, the Co-op arranged and conducted 22 per cent of funerals nationally. Today, The Co-op is Britain’s largest funeral directors, conducting more than 60,000 funerals every year.

I spoke to Jack Birks who started work in the funeral department at The Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society in Woolwich in 1934, rising to the position of manager. He retired in the 1980s.

Mr Birks was born in Abbeywood in the 1920s on an estate owned by the Co-op Society. As a child and throughout his youth, his life revolved around the Co-op. It was a natural progression to work for the society.

The idea was to provide a centralised service comprising respectable outlets with chapels of rest — a new concept — and quality cars with smartly-dressed pall-bearers. The funereal cars were Daimlers which were specially built and cost as much as £36,000 each.

The first outlet in south east London was in Plumstead High Street. The manager was a Mr Wilkinson.

At that time, most people lived in villages.

Mr Birks said: “You knew more people, in fact you probably married the girl next door.” The church was once central to people’s lives but Mr Birks said, when making funeral arrangements with relatives in more recent times, “people no longer knew the name of their parish”.

Until the later decades of the 20th Century, people generally died at home. The body stayed in the house and the coffin was left open for up to a week so people could pay their last respects.

Neighbours either side would draw their blinds as a mark of respect.

Mr Birks said: “We collected the body and walked with it away from the house so neighbours could see it.” Men doffed their hats and people crossed themselves. The body was brought to a room at the back of the chapel of rest. People wore black to funerals and would often continue wearing black for the rest of their lives “because they were hard up”.

Jack recalled two prominent people the society buried: wartime MP Lord Morrison, whose funeral was attended by Harold Wilson and members of his government, and Russian dissident writer Nicholas Ogareff, 63, who lived and died in exile in Greenwich.

At the end of the Cold War in 1966 his remains were exhumed, cremated and sent back to Moscow for burial in a columbarium at the Kremlin.