I met an old lady who told me that when she was a little girl her mother handed her the wrapped body of a newborn, her sibling who was stillborn or quickly died, and told her to take the body to the undertaker to be top or tailed, tucked into a coffin with another stranger’s body. She did this. What is remarkable is that although it was thought appropriate for her to run this errand , she had not been told her mother was pregnant. That apparently was the more taboo subject.
