Horse drawn hearse
Four-wheeled funeral vehicle. Body painted black with gold trimming. Carved angels blowing trumpets inset into each corner of the body. Green pinstriping on black wheels. Two large glass oval windows on both sides of vehicle.
The hearse was commissioned in 1885 from Perth coachbuilder and merchant Levi Green by George Wansborough, a carpenter and coffin-maker who became a funeral director in the inland town of York. Later owners of the funeral business, Stephen and Richard Harvey, sold it to Lew Whiteman in 1963. It became part of his bequest to Whiteman Park.
Details
Details
[L. GREEN Coach Builder Perth] on door.
This sombre but highly decorative hearse carried the dead to a final resting place for 65 years. It shows the change from the simple timber carts used in early colonial Western Australia to this American-style hearse drawn by matching black horses, with all the ceremonial ornamentation and dignity seen as appropriate for the journey to the cemetery. Custom-built motorised vehicles were taking over from horse-drawn hearses by the 1920s, but this hearse was used in York until 1950.
