00:00there's a side to the coffin works that you might be surprised about after all when you die you
00:06normally go in your own clothes these days but not traditionally traditionally you wore a shroud
00:11where were they made well surprisingly enough they were made here megan tell me about this amazing
00:18part of the factory so um so this room we call the shroud room um they made burial garments up
00:25here
00:25so it's not something that everyone tends to think too much about um but historically and shrouds and
00:32burial gowns were the way of um essentially dressing those recently deceased um and the
00:39different different elements that they had here was they'd make they'd make burial gowns but also
00:44the linings and the rest of the factories largely like metal work but up here it was like the softer
00:49stuff the thing that's fascinating about this you've got a selection here yes in interesting
00:54colors tell me about this yes so we've got quite a catalog of different colors of um the shrouds
01:01that we used to make here at the newman brothers factory you probably can tell um partially from
01:06my accent is that we're in birmingham but also this color um this color scheme here probably
01:11shouts out something which is aston villa um so in the 1960s they started to develop different color
01:17schemes for what they were making and to give people like a personalized choice for what they could
01:22be dressed in so you've got aston villa but of course you also need as well like a city um
01:29so
01:30we've got two different ones but they also then had different detailings on different shrouds as well
01:36so if i flick through a little bit is this was like a catalog that traveling salesmen would take
01:42around with them to female directors and we have a catholic shroud as well so they started to develop
01:48different styles to suit different people there's an opportunity if you're making this quality work
01:53is there a chance you could knock out a foreigner um so this is sheila mayer um she worked here
01:58in the
01:59mid-20th century um and she was very young when she worked here she worked as a seamstress and
02:04essentially um what happened was she um had to make her wedding dress quite quickly um and when she did
02:11so
02:12is that she didn't have enough money to make a nice white wedding dress so she decided that she worked
02:17somewhere where did have nice different um options for materials so she took a lot of the um parts
02:23home here she wrapped them um under her clothes and then took them home and what she did then was
02:29made
02:29a very nice wedding dress um but thankfully in a strange way we don't think that there was doing
02:34much repercussions for her because she carried on working here for a little while longer but then
02:39soon as like she was married and settled down to have like a family and things so she
02:43didn't work here any longer well thank you very much that's good to see the human element of what
02:48is going on so there you go what a fantastic museum this is not only did they produce the
02:55coffin furniture but they enabled you to be buried in style
02:59you
