For most of us, a visit to the Mortuary will be on a gurney, in no fit state to learn about how our society deals with bodies involved in suspicious deaths. Thanks to Ms Williams then for showing us what happens in an ordinary mortuary department where death can be very extraordinary. Enlivened with some extremely black humour, she outlines the work she does, the care and commitment of the technicians, the bizarre ways in which people can die and some of the tragedies she encounters in her first year.
Down Among the Dead Men: A Year in the Life of a Mortuary Technician Synopsis
Michelle Williams is young and attractive, she has close family ties as well as a busy social life - but she is far from usual. She is a mortuary technician and her job involves dealing with those things in life that many people do not wish to experience directly. Yet life in the mortuary is neither gruesome nor sad. Told with good humour and common sense, we are introduced to a host of characters - the pathologists, many of them eccentric, some downright mad; the undertakers, the hospital porters and the man from the coroner's office who sings to Michelle every morning. The incidents too ensure that no two days are ever the same. From the tragic to the hilarious they include: the fitness fanatic who was run over as he did pressups in the road on a dark night; the decapitated motorcyclist; the guide dog who led his owner on to the railway tracks - and left him there; and, the forty stone man for whom an entire refrigerated lorry had to be hired because he wouldn't fit in the mortuary cooler. Over the course of her first year Michelle has to deal with situations and emotions that few of us will ever experience, and does so while retaining a sense of humour and a sense of perspective.
Michelle Williams was born in Cheltenham in 1973. she have lived in Cheltenham all my life and continues to do so. she was educated at local state schools. She had a solid upbringing, and started working for the NHS when she was twenty years old.
At the age of thirty, ten years on, she was lucky enough to land the role of Anatomical Pathology Technician at Cheltenham General Hospital, and now, five years later, hold the title of mortuary manager at Cheltenham General Hospital after succeeding in the certificate and diploma exams from the Royal Institute of Public Health in Anatomical Pathology Technology, this giving her the letters CAPT and DAPT after my name.
