funeralestablishment

John Hislop along with his brother James were prize-winning furniture manufacturers and upholsterers with premises in Queen Street. They also conducted funerals together from the 1870s. This partnership was dissolved in 1889 with the funeral and furniture businesses being separated with the bulk of the funerary business being conducted from Peel Street, South Brisbane. John Hislop and Sons established another branch at 544 Queen Street in 1912 where he and his three sons, daughter, and son-in-law conducted business until the 1950s when the Queen Street traffic forced them to consolidate the business at Peel Street. John Hislop died on 15 July 1918 aged 74 after a long and painful illness. His funeral left the same day from his residence Norman Villa at Norman Park. The funeral was conducted by Cannon and Crips. Source: www.fotc.org.au/subset/undertakers_underground.pdf

Early undertakers relied on horse-drawn transport, and a surviving remnant of those days are the concrete troughs that can be found in a quiet part of the cemetery. These were originally used for holding food and drink for the horses that pulled the hearses, as well as the carts of other visitors to the cemetery. An electric tramline was laid along Gladstone Road in the 1900s, allowing people to use trams for funeral processions for the first time. Special hearse trams were used, in which the coffin was placed at the front of the tram behind the driver, and the mourners were seated in the carriage behind. Coffins could also arrive by train at the Boggo Junction (later Dutton Park) station across the road. This usually happened when the deceased had died out of town and had to be brought into the family plot. Source: www.fosbc.com/history/cemetery-people/the-undertakers/