Cooling board

A cooling board was a perforated wooden platform on which a dead body would be temporarily stored and prepared for a funeral. Ice was placed beneath it to keep the body chilled, slowing the decomposition process. Holes in the cooling board, which could be made of cane latticework rather than a solid wooden plank, allowed blood and other fluids to drain from the body. It could also be used to display the body for a viewing if the casket was not delivered in time.[1]

Metal embalming tables replaced cooling boards as modern refrigeration became available.

The cooling board is referred to in a number of blues songs, such as "Cooling Board Blues" by Blind Willie McTell.[1]

Son House also makes a reference to a cooling board in his "Death Letter".

So, I grabbed up my suitcase, and took off down the road.
When I got there she was layin on a coolin' board.

A cooling board is also found in a song, "Thank You, Master (For My Soul)", by the late Donnie Hathaway:[2]

'cause the walls of my room was not the walls of my grave
my bed was not my cooling board (y'all don't know what i'm talkin' 'bout)

Benjamin B. French witnessed Abraham Lincoln's remains, after transfer from the Peterson House to the White House, being "taken from the box in which they were enclosed, all limp and warm, and laid upon the floor, and then stretched upon the cooling board."[3]

References
  1. Kate Sweeney (2014). American Afterlife: Encounters in the Customs of Mourning. University of George Press. pp. 4–5. ISBN 978-0-8203-4600-7.
  2. "Thank You, Master (For My Soul)" at Lyricsbox
  3. Marling (2008) Ice: Great Moments in the History of Hard, Cold Water ISBN 978-0-87351-628-0. Minnesota Historical Society, p. 62.


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