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In many smaller communities, the funeral director served many functions
in addition to his primary undertaking duties. It is well known that many funeral homes also served as temporary
hospitals, places used to stabilize accident victims before they could be transported to a nearby hospital.
Additionally they commonly had purpose-built combination hearses which also could be used as an ambulance with
minor alterations. A little-known fact is that in small towns funeral home owners typically owned the local
furniture store as well. In very small communities some funeral parlors did double-duty, operating as a furniture
store Monday through Friday and as a funeral home when the need arose.
The William Schelm Company of East Peoria, Illinois was one early firm which catered to the funeral home/
furniture store marketplace. Starting in 1914 they offered a combination motorized funeral coach, furniture delivery
car using a stretched Model T chassis. This utilitarian vehicle would prove popular in the early years of motorized
coaches and numerous manufactures soon offered similar models. These early multi-purpose vehicles look much
like the flower cars that would become popular starting in the late 1930s and some big-city funeral directors used
them for transporting floral tributes in large corteges. The unusual Schelm casket-cars were made through the early
1920s.
Some directors used them to transport chairs, altars, and supplies to the cemetery grounds while others used them
as a first call car, the vehicle which was sent to the home of the deceased. In the 19th and early 20th
century, some families kept the body in the house and the funeral director did the embalming on site. A number of
manufacturers offered embalming or first call cars, which typically contained a casket and all supplies needed for
embalming.
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